With the caveat that the needs of the military can cause adjustments, the first few ranks (up to E4 for enlisted, O3 for officers) are a “fully qualified” criteria. That is, if you haven’t screwed up, you will get promoted to those grades. After that the criteria becomes “best qualified”. With legal limits on the number of each rank, there are always more qualifed than there is room for. When the competition is tight, any thing to discriminate will make a difference. If you are clearly the best, the degree isn’t as important. All other things being equal, the person with the degree will be picked, or more precisely the one without the degree will not be picked.
What do they use, then, as a screener to determine who is qualified to become an officer and who can only become (or should stay as) enlisted? Is it a loyalty/background check/security clearance thing where you have to be ultra-trustworthy to be an officer but don’t need any specific knowledge and skills? E.g. there’s something in Sgt Schlomo’s background that makes the Israeli Army question his loyalty to Zionism and so can’t become an officer. Is it a matter of exams and you have to pass some sort of knowledge or skills assessment to advance to officer training and/or commissioning?
No, they simply promote from inside the ranks. If you’re a good soldier, they make you an NCO. If you’re a good NCO, they offer to send you to Officer’s Course (which does not grant a college degree). It’s purely based on merit and competence, or at least it should be.
And service guarantees citizenship, I presume?
Sorry - I was busy. Short answer, yes.
There are a number of avenues open to members of the military to pursue higher education and most (if not all) of the ones I know that stay in for any length of time take advantage of it. Royal Roads offers a two year Masters through distance learning and once you achieve the rank of Major, you are often sent to the Staff College in Toronto (or in the US) to get further education.
It’s crucial if you want to get to the higher ranks.
Other way around.
Robert was making a Heinlein reference I believe.
The Army War College isn’t just a way to get a Masters. Not every officer gets to go. If you aren’t picked you are basically being told you will never be a general. It doesn’t matter what other degrees you might have.
Yeah, I got that about six minutes after I posted.
I just retired out of the USAF as a Major. Electrical Engineer. Actually I’m on terminal leave right now so I’m still on actve duty for another couple of months. I’ll say (the following are all unwritten rules that are accepted by all USAF officers, though not documented):
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Once you are a Major you’re expected to either have completed grad school or be well on your way to completion.
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You will be severly handicapped trying to compete for Lt Col without a graduate degree and forget about Colonel without one.
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The current CSAF has said he’s going to hide graduate degrees from view for officer promotion boards because he thinks people should be promoted based on their officership and effectivness, not on academic box checking. This is threatened by every CSAF in history and never actually ends up happening.
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Academic degrees are used as discriminators for promotion because all of our performance reports are highly inflated. Everyone who is not a dirtbag appears to walk on water if you read their OPRs. Things like graduate degrees and other “optional opportunities” are easy ways for selection board members to bin people with a “black and white” criteria, which is impossible using only OPRs because of how broken the appraisal process is. This is why you always see alot of operators (pilots, navs etc…) rushing out the year before their O5 board and plowing through some shitty online MBA in 6 months, because it’s literally a box check.