In this day and age of changing roles for the military, do they have programs for college students to join a civilian arm without actually joining the military and being subject to all of their whims?
My daughter (a college sophomore) spoke to and received some information from the navy for a program that is clearly not ROTC.
My advice to her-take the job! I only wish I had done the same. You have all the advantages of the military (esy transfers,job security) with none of the disadavantages (getting killed). And remember-promotion is automatic, and seniority is everything. plus, after 3-4 years it is alost impossible to be fired-that counts a lot, today!
She can go to the USAJOBS website and do an agency search. The services are listed separately, along with the Department of Defense. It is searchable by location and specialty as well.
Ralph… Are you confirming the existence of such a program with all the benefits you mentioned and much less risk than typical military service?
By program I mean something they sign onto during college that may even provide some compensation during their college years.
I’ve written a few recommendation letters for the SMART program. If I recall correctly, they paid for your tuition as well as a pretty nice stipend while earning your undergrad degree, then you worked for the DoD as a civilian. If you dropped out of the program at any time all the money they’d spent on you converted to loans that were payable instantly - not sure if they were payable in full instantly but that was the impression I got. I don’t know much about government salaries but the starting salaries seemed high for what my baseless expectation of a government salary would be. Both the students I wrote letters for were engineers.