Forbes, West Point, and Higher Ed

At the risk of re-opening a discussion that has (thankfully) come to a close, I want to briefly revisit Thomas Ricks' proposal to ditch the service academies. Galrahn dealt at some length with Ricks' argument that the service academies should be eliminated, and I contributed a bit to the discussion at my other blog. When Forbes decided to make West Point its number one American college, Hana Alberts interviewed me as to whether I thought such a ranking was plausible. My answer was a qualified yes, with the qualification centering on what precisely was expected from the number one undergraduate institution in the United States. Given that I had also come to qualified agreement with Ricks regarding the shut down of the academies, this probably requires further explanation. To set forth a couple of priors, I am an academic, I believe pretty strongly in the academic project (in the sense that I think that an abstract undergraduate education is good for individuals and good for society), and I teach in a graduate program that is primarily geared towards policy.

Is West Point #1? Sure, depending on what you want from a student. To the best of my recollection, we haven't had a service academy grad at Patterson since I started teaching there in 2005. We have, however, had several VMI grads, and they have been of uniformly high quality. Indeed, I'd go so far as to say that VMI grads have substantially outperformed the expectations generated by GPA and GRE scores. I have no reason to believe that service academy grads would perform any differently, and I think that we would view graduation from a service academy as a significant plus during the admissions process.

This doesn't necessarily mean that West Point/Annapolis/USAFA produce the best students, or the smartest students, or that I would always prefer an academy grad to a elite college grad. Harvard graduates will, by and large, have a stronger academic profile than West Point grads, and in some cases this will weigh in their favor. I also wouldn't want a graduate program (or a work force) composed solely of academy grads, at the expense of elite civilian institution grads. Diversity of viewpoint is extremely valuable in any academic setting, and in most work settings.

Then Why Shut it Down? Primarily, because I think that much of what makes a service academy graduate great is present before the student steps foot on campus. Even considering attendance at a service academy requires an enormous amount of fortitude; I know that I gave up the idea when I was a high school senior because I was convinced I couldn't hack it. Going to Yale, Michigan, UC-Berkeley, the University of Kentucky, or the University of Washington is unlikely to weaken the resolve of the typical service academy applicant; I don't believe that exposure to a more rigorous academic environment will make the typical cadet or midshipmen less capable or dedicated. On the contrary, I suspect that exposure to the wider academic universe, accompanied by capable ROTC training, would produce better officers.

Moreover, I think that it's a two way street. The number of academy students who would be diffused across the American university system is relatively small, but would represent the elite of those interested in military service. I suspect that the diffusion of the very best of America's military officer prospects across America's university system will serve to improve the system, both by providing more diversity in the classroom and by raising the general level of student commitment. It's fair to say that this is not, in academia, a universally held sentiment; while I was always very happy to have ROTC students in my courses, some faculty view them in a less positive light.

But isn't this all academic (heh)? The debate over shutting the academies? Yes. The discussion about the strength of academy grads and about the content of military education, however, will endure. I hope that the next decade will see the end of two things; the exclusion of ROTC from several elite civilian educational institutions, and a series of misunderstandings of military affairs within the academy. The former will likely result from the end of DODT, which almost everyone agrees is on its last legs. The latter will result from generational change in academic faculty. Both developments will, in my view, have significant positive effects for both society-at-large and for the military. For the period 1970-2000, there was an unfortunate disconnect between the military establishment and the system of higher education. The cause was Vietnam, and the effects were all-around negative. I think, however, that this era has already been supplanted by a more modern, sophisticated understanding of the relationship between the academy (writ large) and our military institutions.