This is based on a rather jaundiced view of officer training in the Australian Defence Force. I agree with Starbuck that we produce good quality junior officers in spite of the system. People with high academic scores as a rule do not join the military. They beocme doctors, dentists, lawyers, or do business degrees in top tier universities. Other than in engineering, and the chance to fly which is the biggest incentive of all, high quality students avoid the Australian Defence Force. If they decide to continue in the service after their initial term of service, unless they get a good position they invariably leave ,JUST as they are at the peak of their training. Our navy prefers people that can play rugby I am unrelaibly told.

My son at 20 earned more as a trainee accountant than an academy graduate with three years, (not including flying pay/sea going allowance, etc), already had property and shares, and a secure future with international travel prosects. The view of this ex-training specialist is that by the time they are ready to go into the world as a junior officer with all their initial courses under their belt they are at least 22 if not 23. In many cases they have fallen behind their peers money wise, it won't get better for at least four years, and most of their time if not operating a ship, plane, platoon, orderly room etc, is doing at least two SLJs (shirty little jobs) as OIC basketweaving etc. Heaven forbid if they want a social life, or increase their academic skills.

It was best summed up by two quotes admittedly from ten years ago, but I don't think it has changed. From a senior instructor: The aim of the academy is to produce officers not academics when commenting about a quote I was told by a student; if you get 51% it means you wasted time getting that extra 1% . Due to all the extra commitments at the academy, near enough is good enough becomes the norm in the academic side. I was doing a PhD at the Academy but they run out of supervisors with the appropraite skill set, so I transferred universities.

The quality of middle and senior officer training has been commented and written about by people far better qualified than me to judge. Mine might be considered libelous.