Quote Originally Posted by 120mm View Post
I was ROTC just a couple years ago, and we are commissioning kids who are functionally illiterate, have to get a PT waiver to get in the army and I swear some of them are borderline retarded.
We see this too.

I've been through three detachment commanders. One was fixated on numbers, and he commissioned some people who had no business being anything other than shift leaders at McDonald's (if that). But it was the numbers game. He could report X number of commissionees in a year...an increase of Y over last year. Then we got a commander who didn't care about numbers but did care about quality. Our numbers are down, but his commissioning classes are damned strong. We'll see where the new one goes....

But that's what happens when you start rating these programs based on numbers. It's easier to rate a detachment based on numbers than it is on quality of commissionees. So we tend to take the easy route. The Army unit at our campus recently got tasked to increase numbers, and you can bet they'll see a drop in quality soon.

I'd be interested to hear how Navy ROTC handles this sort of thing.