Well yeah, but I suspect in the military, nobody’s looking at where you went to college, but they’re rather looking at how you came into the military- OCS, ROTC, senior military college, or a service academy.
Even at that, from what I understand, it’s really more the networking that those afford that are the key; a West Pointer will have a ready-made network of officers in the Army of all ranks and jobs. Someone from say… VMI or Texas A&M has something similar, but not as pervasive. ROTC programs have even less, and OCS the least of all.
Yeah, I have a good friend who is a history professor for the USAF. His job is to teach history, strategy and geopolitics to mid-level Air Force officers (captains, majors & lieutenant colonels) who are trying to move up the ladder to higher command. I get the impression that the sorts of courses he teaches are as much, if not more important than the more nuts and bolts of managing aerial warfare stuff.
But the x-factor is VMI graduates are known universally to be among the very best people—the finest Americans—with graduates today serving in every branch of the military.
No kidding. But it’s also worth considering that West Point, in Ike’s day, was, I believe (IANA West Point Historian) still struggling to transition away from being an engineering school, not exactly a bastion of the liberal arts. Point of fact, I don’t believe they were even awarding degrees in his day, just commissions (and when they did start awarding degrees, they were bachelors of science).
So it’s very, very strange to be putting Eisenhower or anyone of his era forward as an example of the “statecraft” baked into a history or poli sci degree.
My point about Eisenhower in World War 2 is that he had to deal with not just the logistics of commanding an army, but also dealing with egos ranging from his own generals to DeGaulle and Montgomery, as well as with decisions like whether to send his own forces full speed into Berlin, or hold them back long enough to let the Soviet forces take the city. That’s statecraft.
In no way was I saying that STEM skills are not important to a military officer, but that an understanding of things like history and political science also are.
It’s more that above a certain rank officers’ post-secondary training centers around statecraft, history, political stuff, etc… so having a background in that kind of stuff would be a sort of leg-up I suppose.
But a big piece of the early military education was centered around producing military engineers, who would be expected to design and build fortifications, harbors, etc… Which is why most of the service academies and senior military colleges are engineering centric.
Even today, there are a lot more combat engineers, mechanics, etc. in the service than there are senior officers, so there’s still going to be more demand for STEM training than for history or poli sci.
I don’t think that holds. Just based on my own experience with the Naval War College’s required curriculum (which most officers don’t even complete in-residence at the NWC—I didn’t) being a history or poli sci major was hardly helpful. Because to the extent there is history in the curriculum, it’s the kind of history that you pick up by osmosis. I’d go so far as to call it a kind of cultural history that is particularized to the Navy, not something one would study extensively in any college except perhaps the Naval Academy (where, again, there is a strong bias to STEM degrees).
I mean, for one of my electives towards a BA in Math I took a course called “Grand Strategy in the 20th Century,” and a lot of the concepts there were relevant to my remote NWC experience, but (1) again, Math major, not history (2) that was an elective course with all of a dozen people in the class, (3) the fact it was even offered probably had something to do with the dean of students, who was teaching the class, being a retired 1-star who had been head of the history department at West Point before he got out and turned to the wider world of academia.
To combine my somewhat disjointed thoughts together, I guess I’ll just say this: (1) to the extent any knowledge of history or government is important to being a senior officer, it’s of a very particularized kind that is not generally taught in college, even to history majors, and (2) the military already recognizes this to an extent, which is why it has mandatory courses of study that all officers, regardless of service, must complete prior to reaching certain ranks. It’s actually mandated by statute, passed by Congress.
And my experience, in the first level of courses (the one you need to be an O-6) was that being a history or poli sci major wouldn’t have been particularly helpful. I mean, I was just a poor dumb math major turned nuclear engineer, but I did pretty well in those courses…
At some point do internal politics trump any particularized knowledge?
By which I mean, I don’t think you become a 4-star general based on your education. You get there by the people you know and the asses you’ve kissed along the way. Certainly a good education was needed at the start of their careers (I’d think) but becomes less important as they move along.
I am not sure where that line would be drawn though (what level in the ranks). And there may be no line…maybe the whole military is a meritocracy but that would surprise me.
Taking a look at the current joint Chiefs of Staff and their baccalaureate degrees (as much as I could find through some light web browsing):
AF General and Chairman Charles Quinton Brown Jr. – BS in Civil Engineering from Texas Tech
Navy Admiral and Vice Chair Christopher Watson Grady – BA in History from Notre Dame
Army General Randy Alan George – BS from West Point (couldn’t find his major although he subsequently earned masters degrees in economics and international security)
Marine General Eric M. Smith – BA in Political Science from Texas A&M
CNO Admiral Lisa Franchetti – BS in Journalism from Northwestern
Air Force COS David W. Allvin – BS in Astronautical Engineering from the Air Force Academy
Space Force General Bradley Chance Saltzman – BA in History from Boston University
Chief of the National Guard General Daniel Robert Hokanson – BS in Mechanical Engineering from West Point
I knew someone who was a HS dropout, enlisted in the navy and somehow got to be a pilot. This was during the Korean war, so I imagine they were really desperate. Remember Ted Williams?
He cracked up a plane and was forced to retire with some disability (as I recall, he could not straighten his left arm) with a disability pension. He got interested in mathematics and started sitting in on courses informally. Somehow he got into grad school and earned a PhD, the only diploma he ever earned. Spent the rest of his life as a professor at a state University.
One of my relatives after a navy enlistment, got into ROTC and got a Aeronautical Engineering degree. He became a flight instructor for the navy. He switched to Air Force for a while, then during a mid-life crisis decided he always wanted to be a doctor. The Navy put him through medical school, and he was a captain for many years, specializing in neurosurgery.
I often joke he’s the closest thing to a combination brain surgeon and rocket scientist, particularly as he was short-listed for the shuttle program back in the day.
You have to find a job opening, for which you are qualified, at or near your current pay grade. They usually prefer to promote from within their own ranks, but if they are having trouble filling a slot, they will gladly poach from another service.
I don’t know for sure, I heard all this second hand. He was a flight instructor for the Navy, presumably his current enlistment was up (is that how it works for officers?) and he got a better offer from the Air Force. When that time was up, he explored his options and the Navy put him through medical school.
Officers don’t have enlistments. It’s kinda right there in the name. Once you are an officer your term of service is indefinite. You are in until you resign, retire or get kicked out.
e.g. Choose to attend this school when offered and you can’t resign for 4 more years. Accept that assignment when offered and you can’t resign for 2 more years. These generally run concurrently, so you can still be encumbered by an existing one when you begin a new one. The overall result being that as a practical matter officers go from lock-in to lock-in and at each transition they may have an opportunity to leave the service or accept the next lock-in.
Typically there will be intervals along a complete 20+ year career timeline where the last obligation is completed and a new one has not been accrued. Yet. And during those intervals the officer is no different from a corporate employee and can quit at any time, subject only to the administrative vagaries of how long it takes to process the “I quit” paperwork.
In my personal case as an example I served a total of 8-1/2 years on active duty. Every day of which was under one of the four overlapping commitments (4 years, 5 years, 2 years, and 3 years respectively) I picked up along the way. Once the last of them expired I quit. At that point I had been offered my next assignment and its concomitant commitment and I said “No thanks.” But the date at which my last commitment would end had been known 3 years in advance when I accepted it. What was unknown at the time I accepted it was what would be next and what if any commitment would be attached to it.
I suppose what I’d say is that traditionally (e.g. pre- WWII) officers had no commitments whereas enlisted did from the very git-go of semi-professional militaries a couple centuries ago.
The practice with officers has slowly evolved to the present situation. So a similar outcome via a different historical path and with different atmospherics even now. Despite the now-small practical differences.
One thing that does (or did in my era) tend to happen is that enlisted assignments are designed around the enlistee’s remaining term of service. IOW, how long they have left drives where they’re sent to do what. In the officer case it’s sorta the opposite: where they go is decided irrespective of their existing commitments and the resulting commitments just tag along for the ride. Again the destination is similar, but the route to get there is not.