The academic studies aren't just for jobs after the 12-year team or for improved recruiting success among good school graduates.

It's most relevant for forming thought processes, for opening the mind to learning, science, methodologies, independent work and much more. Studying engineering is for example much, much tougher than the learning in an officer course.

I believe I remember having read that Petraeus confessed that after many years of military service and military learning his experience at some university was a shock. Suddenly, it wall all very difficult and he couldn't easily convince people any more (command authority makes this much, much easier, apparently...). He had to add a lot to his repertoire for success in such an environment.

There are furthermore experiences of armies that did not emphasize academic learning for officers and tended to neglect technical and organisational aspects of the military as well as intellectual thought about what combat arms should do and how.


That being said, I doubt that the German system with special universities for the armed services is a good idea. It would make more sense to expose the students to civilian life more and get a wider choice of specialisations, but that would in turn require that some normal universities introduce trimesters.