Quote Originally Posted by Ken White
The OCS guys stay past eight years in greater numbers because they like what they're doing. The USMA and ROTC grads leave in greater numbers because they do not like what they're doing -- and I submit that a lot of Staff jobs aid them in making that determination. The OCS person will endure the staff because the Army is more important to him than the petty foolishness -- or his wife. OTOH, the bright young thing will not stay because his wife is more important than the Army and the 18-20 year old who is calculating enough to opt for a scholarship probably had other things in mind down the pike in any event...
Ken,

There's certainly some truth in that, but the question is broader than just those eight years. OCS officers will also experience higher continuation rates in those eight years because they are closer to hitting the 20yr mark (and compared to ROTC/USMA graduates, have fewer years to make up for the lost value of that retirement pay). Thus, the question also becomes one of continuation beyond 20 years of service (including enlisted service). They don't present this in the piece, but if memory serves me correct, you see a large attrition in OCS commissionees at that point. The authors don't cite specific evidence but do address this:

Accordingly, many of these OCS-IS officers will be eligible for retirement before reaching the rank of major, which does little to help fill the Army’s shortages at the rank of major and lieutenant colonel.
Quote Originally Posted by William F. Owen
I think a lot of this comes down to how you recruit your officers, and what criteria you use to select them. Armies that require all officers to have succeeded as NCOs first or rather to have risen well above the ranks historically produce highly motivated men.
Wilf,

You're going to have to school me on some of the historical examples, but in looking at your comment, one Army that currently comes to mind as a model of this is the IDF. However, that is a very imprecise analogy because their mandatory service keeps the pool of potential OCS candidates almost as large as the population. However, given the All-Volunteer Army in the United States, your ability to grow the enlisted pool large enough to support an officer corps with the attributes the authors describe is simply not sustainable (additionally, in terms of cost, OCS-IS is the most expensive form of commissioning in the US). Also, given the IDF's propensity towards the tactical spectrum (after all, the potential breadth of their mission set is not the same as the US), I'm not sure if they're the correct example to look at even if we were to ignore the mandatory conscription (although the # of waivers has increased over the years). However, I'm sure that there are other examples that I'm missing due to my own ignorance.

Quote Originally Posted by Ken White
I've long contended that I'd rather have two motivated dummies than all unmotivated smart guys you can give me. I can train the dummies; I cannot motivate the unmotivated
You can train dummies to function only up to a certain level of responsibility. At some point, training is not enough and it requires education, education that may be beyond the capability of the dummies. Nonetheless, I would hope that our pre-commissioning sources are able to cull out the unmotivated with the rare exception.

Quote Originally Posted by Old Eagle
Is the current OER system a reflection of talent? If not, what is? What can be?
OE,

Fundamentally, I think the OER has decent enough blocks to capture different forms of talent. Raters can write about special skills that could be of use to the Army. However, unless these skills are sufficiently incentivized (consideration by promotion boards, actually use by branch managers to make assignment decisions as proposed by the authors, etc.), then it will remain underutilized.

In terms of rentention, the masking of CPT OERs was a mistake in my opinion. Every single briefing I got as a LT/CPT by HRC folks spoke of how important company command OERs were (both in terms of ACOM and # of months in command) to battalion command selection boards. While it didn't affect my year group, if I were in a subsequent year group and had an ACOM profile that previously made me competitive but was now masked, my incentive to stick around was reduced. I think that on average, your more talented officers will have risen by the time they hit the 7/8 year point in commissioned service and so the masking now incentivizes less talented individuals to stick around while those who did shine above their peers may now decide to get out.