A budget-cutting measure we can believe in

From a (slightly dated) WaPo article:

Want to trim the federal budget and improve the military at the same time? Shut down West Point, Annapolis and the Air Force Academy, and use some of the savings to expand ROTC scholarships.

Let's do it, says I.

I really can't speak at all on the caliber of officers produced by ROTC vs academies vs any other route, so I'll withhold judgement there. I know two guys who are enlisted members of the Army and are both extremely nice, intelligent people. I know two officers, one Air Force via the academy, and one Army via going straight to OCS. Both are extremely nice, intelligent people.

I probably shouldn't speak about Ricks's criticism that most West Point professors don't have doctorates, if only because a not-insignificant number of instructors at my school of choice do not hold doctorates. But at my school something is extremely problematic if your instructor is lecturing, because lecturing has no place on the Program. I don't believe that they use the same approach at any of the service academies, and since the entire approach is much more 'traditional' there than at St. John's, then I don't think it's unreasonable to want your educator to have reached the highest level of education in that field.

Proponents of the academies, in my opinion, claim that the students get a top-notch education at no cost, and you want your future military commanders to be well-educated. I absolutely agree that we want them to have solid educational backgrounds, and I think that if we had higher standards for the military overall we'd have far fewer problems with the military doing stupid things. From the little I know about the academies, the education provided is excellent, if not terribly well rounded*. I also think that someone enrolled in an ROTC program - or, for that matter, simply enrolled - at a respectable college or university will also recieve an excellent education.

Proponents of the academies say that the institutions are excellent training programs and instill honor. Is the implication of this that enlisted soldiers and officers via OCS and ROTC aren't well-trained and honorable? If so, perhaps we ought to fix that post-haste. If not, then that argument falls apart. Also, there may be some debate about the honor bit.

Here's the way I see it, as someone who has admittedly a minimal amount of knowledge from a complete outsider's viewpoint: There are three ways to become an officer in the military - academy, OCS, or ROTC. All of them require a 4-year degree. One of those routes incurs no excessive cost: someone joins the military, applies to OCS, goes and gets trained up as an officer. One of them includes the cost of college tuition - ROTC scholarships, if I'm not mistaken, generally pay near the full cost of even a private-school tuition. And the third option costs the equivilant of an expensive four-year education, and an active-duty paycheck. It also needs to be considered that, unlike ROTC scholarships, the DoD isn't just paying for tuition for students; they're shouldering the entire cost associated with running three full-on colleges**.

So we've got three possible options to become an officer in the military, one of which is cheap, one is kinda expensive, and one is mad pricey. There is not, as far as I'm aware, any conclusive evidence that academy grads are somehow more prepared to serve than other officers nor better at their jobs. And we're the only country which has a program remotely like this, where the military will in fact pay you to go and get a four year degree in exchange for a few years of pushing paperwork around a desk. That in and of itself, I think, ought to be a clue.

I don't expect that the system will significantly change anytime soon - even Obama is content to keep letting the DoD take however the hell much money it wants, regardless of what it's used for (hello, our extremely expensive fleet of fighter jets which are awesome for shooting down those damn red soviets. hello, not including WAR in the DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE budget.), but it is nice to at least see someone in a mainstream publication pointing out that there may be some ways to cut some costs very significantly.

Also, I find the idea of enmeshing higher education with military indoctrination to be fairly reprehensible. I really don't like the idea of the same organization which says "well, I guess it's okay to be not-heterosexual, if you have to, but we'd prefer you not mention it. ever, to anyone you work with. and if anyone asks you about your personal life, lie I guess. and don't, you know, have sex or kiss or hold hands or anything gross like that. because if you do and we find out about it we'll fire you because gay people are really kinda gross" also saying, "Yes! We will give you a fine, honorable higher-level education and train you to be one of the best leaders in the world!" absolutely, repulsively hypocritcal. You want to talk about honor? Stop making it illegal to be queer, stop torturing people, stop having your recruiters lie, and stop shooting brown people because they like their boomy skyvoice more than your boomy skyvoice, you jackasses.

*Granted, sometime in the past five years I've developed the horrible mindset of seeing any sort of remotely sepecialized education as not well-rounded, so make what you will of that.
**Maybe four? I admit that I don't have a clue who exactly pays for the Coast Guard academy, as they're a military academy but the Coast Guard is recently run by DHS since we decided boats aren't transportation anymore, but I think that a lot of their money comes from the defense budget, so I'm not even going to try to understand. Also the Coast Guard apparently doesn't do ROTC, but really I think that there's like six hundred people in the entire Coast Guard and all they do is change lightbulbs on buoys, so I'm really content to ignore on. I have no grudge with the Coast Guard.