It’s 2017. The Military Still Requires Officers To Have College Degrees. Why?

[Loachman]

Professions require education.  Higher education.  You cannot be a professional (in the proper definition of the term) without it.  See Drs, Lawyers, Engineers, Accountants, Nurses etc... Therefore the "Profession at arms" needs an education because minimum literacy and numeracy standards have to be met.

How did we ever win the Second World War with so few degrees among so many Officers?

"Drs, Lawyers, Engineers, Accountants, Nurses" are educated/trained as such in universities, yes. There are no other venues. We provide our Officers with the necessary education/training to perform effectively, and at the appropriate levels. Universities do not do that, as they do for the non-military occupations that you mentioned.

I've never had to apply "literacy and numeracy standards" above what I learned in public school, let alone high school, in thirty-five years in flying and staff positions. Perhaps the quality of education has slipped a lot in public schools since I was there. I did have the benefit of beginning my education in England, and was thus quite ahead of my age group in Canada post-immigration.

University education all but guarantees this where high school does not.  It also means that when you were out there in the world doing school you were also exposed to new ideas and different ways of thinking, which is valuable to any organization.  It also generally demonstrates your ability to self learn and manage your time.

Nothing guarantees anything. There are also many ways in which one can be "exposed to new ideas and different ways of thinking" - seeing the world and interacting with different cultures as part of one's career comes to mind. The various Officer selection and training programmes should "generally demonstrate(s) your ability to self learn and manage your time" as well.

There is research held by the PSel branch that proves university educated officers are more likely to succeed in training and have the skills necessary to succeed in their first posting after OFP (65% predictive when combined with CFAT and new interview process).  This isn't to say that if you don't have one you are incapable or worse, just less likely to succeed.

And what was the success/failure rate like in the "bad old" pre-every-Officer-must-have-a-degree days? If it was worse, is the difference worth the time and cost of putting every single Officer through three or four years of university?

Finally the real reason we have university educated officers is because of the Somalia Report which pointed out that the Canadian Forces officer corps were highly resistant too and lacked higher education (the groupthink problems referenced earlier).  IIRC it was below 40% of officers who had a degree.  The recommendation that came out of that was that all officers must have a university degree, which DND accepted with the goal that 95% of officers would have a degree of some type.

There were far more serious problems in Somalia than Officers without degrees, and I've seen plenty of "groupthink" in university-trained professions as well.

I've had quite an exposure to the medical community over the last five years, and it's far from perfect. There is much resistance to new ideas, especially the simple, cheap, and effective ones as opposed to those that come from drug- and equipment-manufacturers accompanied by slick advertising campaigns, don't really solve the underlying problem, are often accompanied by a lengthy list of side-effects, and cost a lot of money.

What's the difference between doctors training doctors and lawyers training lawyers in universities and military Officers training military Officers in military training establishments?

Why don't we recognize the equivalent value of our own training - initial Officer training, whatever OPDP is called now, and the various staff courses, instead of blindly worshipping civilian degrees? Why not rename the Infantry School "Infantry University" or 2 Canadian Forces Flying Training School "2 Canadian Forces Flying Training University" and issue a military degree along with a Commissioning Scroll? Our programmes are a lot more intensive and much harder to get through, if somewhat shorter.

I am not anti-education, but highly sceptical of any claim that a random degree makes one a more effective Officer, or is the only means by which one can become knowledgeable and well-rounded.

My daughter was the first one in my family to get a degree. I took a fair amount of pride in her accomplishment, but she remains somewhat bitter about her inability to find a decent job afterwards, and it took her many years to pay off her student debt. So many have BAs that prospective employers basically dismissed hers, and she feels that her teachers who pushed the value of an education lied to her. That old cliche about the person with a BA asking "Do you want fries with that?" That's the rut in which she's still stuck, and nothing that she spent all of that money and effort on has given her any practical benefit.

In comparison, I have Grade 12 and four Grade 13 credits and was making $111,000 and change when I got punted for exceeding my allowable allotment of birthdays, and now receive more in pension money than many with degrees will make for many years. I would not have given up any four years of the career that I had in exchange for a degree. I'd certainly have learned a lot less.

 

[Loachman]

Bad leadership begets bad leaders.

Mefloquine didn't help, either.

 

[Oldgateboatdriver]

A few extra remarks at this point:

First one goes to something Quadrapiper said: There is no "staff" work on a warship because there is no "staff" as that term is defined by Baz (except, maybe the captain's steward if you look at it as he is supporting the captain's command work  :king:: "You're up early, sir. Let we fetch you a coffee - I had it ready just in case" or "That's alright, sir. I'll let your wife know you'll be late again, and I will pick up your dry cleaning at Canex on the way so you'll have it for tomorrow." Etc. etc.). Or if you look at it in reverse, everybody is staff to the captain.

Anyhow, second point concerns what Underway just mentioned about the profession of arms. While it is true that all "professions" have education requirements, it is also true that some will graduate at the top of their class while others will graduate at the bottom. Some will go on to be the chiefs of their medical field in teaching or research hospitals, while others will either be competent for, or satisfied with receiving people with the little ailments and pains and prescribe a bunch of pills based on the say so of drug companies. In law, some will be the top corporate lawyers in a large National firm, while others will do divorce/family law work in a small local practice. My experience is that where people graduate is actually not an indicator of which of those doctors or lawyers will end up being one or the other I described above.

So, yes, "higher" education is required for the profession of arms, but unless we define "higher" as transformative education that "makes the educated person a man-of-the-world (sorry for women here, I don't know what a gender neutral expression would be), then the narrowly focused "training" that professionals like doctors or engineers get in university can only be looked at as advanced technical training and not "higher education". If so, why can't the military take people who graduated high school with good marks and actually be the ones providing the "higher" education of a professional type?

I don't know when you joined, Underway, but in my early days, the Navy used to take high school graduates right off  and pass them through a program (NOTP) that was about a year long, given at VENTURE, that would get them ready to go to sea onboard the old MACKENZIE class ships for a further 26 (I think) weeks to then stand a BWK board. They would then be sent to an operational ship to pass their "full" BWK. They off course would then have their OPDOPIEs, their basic training course in their "field", their "D" level. In all they probably got a good three years of actual formal "education" in the field of naval operations by the time they did all this, and frankly - onboard a ship - you couldn't tell them apart from those officers who had university degrees. Few of them made it past Commander, but almost all of them stayed in and made some of the best  seaman officers in the fleet. What's wrong with that?
 

 

[Underway]

How did we ever win the Second World War with so few degrees among so many Officers?

If we are oversimplifying, with massive industries that out produced the Japanese and Germans, oil and a nuclear bomb.  If you would like to bring up the value of university education of officers then you need to look no further than the Battle of Ypres where a Canadian chemist told the men to piss in their hankies so the urea in it could counteract the worst effects of the gas. 

"Drs, Lawyers, Engineers, Accountants, Nurses" are educated/trained as such in universities, yes. There are no other venues. We provide our Officers with the necessary education/training to perform effectively, and at the appropriate levels. Universities do not do that, as they do for the non-military occupations that you mentioned.

University education is the first step in your professional life.  Engineers are not legally engineers until they do 4 years of experience in industry under a PEO and pass an ethics and law exam, Dr's must do a residency in a hospital outside of school etc...  and if you want to get technical you can go to milcol to get a military focused education.

I've never had to apply "literacy and numeracy standards" above what I learned in public school, let alone high school, in thirty-five years in flying and staff positions. Perhaps the quality of education has slipped a lot in public schools since I was there. I did have the benefit of beginning my education in England, and was thus quite ahead of my age group in Canada post-immigration.

This is going to come across insulting but it's not intended that way.  You're a pilot.  If you can make it through pilot training you had to read and understand technical manuals, airfoil science etc...  That points to the fact that you were educated enough or just generally very bright.  However how much does pilot training cost.  Are you willing to increase the cost to the training system because someone doesn't have the basic literacy to read a technical manual.
  Education standards reduce that risk significantly.

Nothing guarantees anything. There are also many ways in which one can be "exposed to new ideas and different ways of thinking" - seeing the world and interacting with different cultures as part of one's career comes to mind. The various Officer selection and training programmes should "generally demonstrate(s) your ability to self learn and manage your time" as well.

They do demonstrate that, but we don't hire people to fail them out of training if they can't.  We hire them with the goal that they can successfully complete training and do our best to ensure we have the new Jr. officers that can succeed.  Every person who fails out of training is a waste of resources, time and a spot where another person who was qualified could have succeeded.  It's impossible to perfectly predict success in training, but education reduces the risk of a training failure.  That's not made up the PSels have the data.  And its statistically significant.  As for seeing the world etc... well that's great after you have finished training, and that's experience.

And what was the success/failure rate like in the "bad old" pre-every-Officer-must-have-a-degree days? If it was worse, is the difference worth the time and cost of putting every single Officer through three or four years of university?
Doesn't really matter does it.  The training and the requirements are completely different today then the "bad old days". But you can compare between new officers who are going to get their degree within their first engagement period vs the ones who already have their degree.  There is a reason that the DEO and ROTP numbers at the recruiting level are much higher than those other programs.

There were far more serious problems in Somalia than Officers without degrees, and I've seen plenty of "groupthink" in university-trained professions as well.

I've had quite an exposure to the medical community over the last five years, and it's far from perfect. There is much resistance to new ideas, especially the simple, cheap, and effective ones as opposed to those that come from drug- and equipment-manufacturers accompanied by slick advertising campaigns, don't really solve the underlying problem, are often accompanied by a lengthy list of side-effects, and cost a lot of money.

What's the difference between doctors training doctors and lawyers training lawyers in universities and military Officers training military Officers in military training establishments?

Dr's and lawyers have to get a degree from another institution before they go to med or law school.  And as such their second degree is the one taught by their profession.  Exactly like Officer training.  Engineers have math, science, history and engineering profs teach them during their undergrad with a high credit requirement for arts courses to make them well rounded.

Why don't we recognize the equivalent value of our own training - initial Officer training, whatever OPDP is called now, and the various staff courses, instead of blindly worshipping civilian degrees? Why not rename the Infantry School "Infantry University" or 2 Canadian Forces Flying Training School "2 Canadian Forces Flying Training University" and issue a military degree along with a Commissioning Scroll? Our programmes are a lot more intensive and much harder to get through, if somewhat shorter.

We do something like that at Ryerson with their flight school program.  And RMC is still a military college and a civilian degree granting institution.

I am not anti-education, but highly sceptical of any claim that a random degree makes one a more effective Officer, or is the only means by which one can become knowledgeable and well-rounded.

It isn't, but it increases the chances of that happening.

 

[sidemount]

Not to mention that other Professions such have been listed require university education that directly relates to the specific job.

How many jobs do the CAF have that are "any degree"

For example, the Infantry are like that. You can have a degree in basket weaving that in no way relates to the profession of being an Infantry officer.

 

[Humphrey Bogart]

Not to mention that other Professions such have been listed require university education that directly relates to the specific job.

How many jobs do the CAF have that are "any degree"

For example, the Infantry are like that. You can have a degree in basket weaving that in no way relates to the profession of being an Infantry officer.

This is actually changing, different MOS will require specific degree programs.

 

[FJAG]

I've done "mountains of staff work" reasonably well without a degree, and seen many degreed officers who suck at staff work.

The CF Staff School on Avenue Road in Toronto was an eight-week course. That's a lot less of a waste of time and money than a degree.

Truer words were never spoken.

When I finished high school and my OCTP training I was a fully qualified gunner but didn't start thinking beyond my own little world until I went to Staff School (which then was done at Avenue Rd and was more like three months I believe)

Staff School was the first time I was teamed up with Navy and Air Force and Purple personnel so gave me a rounded understanding of the Forces as a whole. Besides teaching staff duties it taught us how to organize our thought processes, taught us how to analyse situations (beyond basic operational appreciations of the situation)taught us how to study properly, taught us how to create and present persuasive arguments and deliver presentations.

Subsequently, as a Battery Captain I became the supervisor and mentor of a number of young subbies who were all graduates of RMC or civilian universities who, quite frankly were next to illiterate when it came to writing PERs or any type of staff paper. I was only a year or two older then them but by then my artillery training and experience had made me a far better gunner then them and my Staff School course a far better administrator. Their four years of university had provided them with very little of value to their units.

I think one has to keep in mind that other professions who require degrees (lawyers, doctors, engineers) have degree programs that are specifically aimed and tailored at teaching the knowledge and skills that the professions need. General university courses may teach things of interest but little of value. (I look back to my own two years of pre-law and can attest to the fact that I earned sixty credit hours of interesting stuff that has furthered me zero percent in either my military or law careers. I sometimes joke that the only thing that gives me an advantage is that a geography course I took taught me what "albedo" is and I doubt if 5% of the population does.)

I also am a great believer in higher education and believe that the professional faculties and the community college programs provide value for money for the individuals and for the country as a whole. On the other hand I also believe that the bulk of the courses offered at universities are the biggest con that we run on our students and taxpayers. Courses that warehouse young people for four years (or more) and provide them with no marketable skills are ridiculous and are being pushed on us by a system that's designed to perpetuate the system rather than benefit the students and country in general. 

I can't help but believe that if we were to develop our young officers ourselves over those four years we would probably get a much better product in half the time and they could use the other two years in gaining practical experience in their chosen fields :2c:

Incidentally, I also agree with the comment above about being more flexible about commissioning from the ranks. Our program right now is heavily weighted towards taking very senior and older NCO. The problem regarding taking younger MCpls and Sergeants is very much tied to the education requirements. If we had a better internal junior officer development process then taking younger NCOs who lack university education and even a year or two of high school would be simpler and lead to more success.

:cheers:

 

[dapaterson]

This is actually changing, different MOS will require specific degree programs.

Which speaks to senior leadership confusing education and training, to my mind.  Unless there's a professional certification required - in the CAF, Doctors and Lawyers and Nurses and Pharmacists and Dentists are all I can think of - we should not be using the type of degree as a filter.  (I'm excluding Engineers from that list, since most CAF engineers do precious little engineering.  And most of the engineering could probably be done more effectively by civilians).

The most humorous part of some of those efforts is that they would disqualify the highest ranking Logistics officer in the CAF from being a Logistics officer.

 

[daftandbarmy]

I was only a year or two older then them but by then my artillery training and experience had made me a far better gunner then them and my Staff School course a far better administrator. Their four years of university had provided them with very little of value to their units.

Except as a warning to others?

 

[Bruce Monkhouse]

Staff work= glorified clerk.

Get over yourselves.

 

[SeaKingTacco]

Staff work= glorified clerk.

Get over yourselves.

Sorry, Bruce, but properly done staff work is nothing of the sort. Properly done staff work is a decision making tool for Commanders. Improperly done staff work is all too common today and it just gums up the works of the CAF.

Clerks do administration. Which is also vital. But it is not staff work.

 

[TangoTwoBravo]

Reading through the original article, there is another way to look at the changes in educational attainment and officer programs. It is true that more people now have degrees than in 1940, but there are also many more people who have completed high school than in the 1940s. It may be that a degree is "worth less" comparatively than seventy years ago, but that does not make a degree less important as an officer program entrance requirement. A high school diploma also meant more in 1940 than it does in 2017 as a discriminator.

That degree on its own does not make somebody an officer, but it is a useful entrance requirement. They must go through CAF/branch education and training. One aspect of the greater percentage of folks with a degree is that some of the barriers from 1940 are gone or lessened.

We do have outstanding leaders in the CAF who do not require degrees - they are our great NCO corps. The  high school grad with leadership qualities will make a great MCpl/Sgt in a few years - they don't all have to go officer! We are blessed with both a professional officer corps and a professional NCO corps and we should be comfortable with that.

Cheers

 

[Good2Golf]

Staff work= glorified clerk.

Get over yourselves.

Not sure even the best of clerks could, for example, liaise with Treasury Board and the Finance Ministry to shape a $0.5B short-notice capital procurement for a 5th C-17.  Could even be a Sr. NCM, but such an individual (NCM v Offr) would also have one (or more in my experience) relevant degrees.

:2c:

Regards,
G2G

 

[blacktriangle]

The CAF is a pretty diverse workplace. We have needs for leaders, administrators, and technical experts. Yet I see plenty in the CAF that can't fill any of those roles competently. And that's not just a shot at officers. We have plenty of sh*tty NCMs too.

I'd rather see young officers get qualified first before we put them through university. Let them lead and be exposed to basic administration. Once they are ready to be Capt, we can look at getting them a public admin/finance/engineering degree (please no art history majors) so they can go fight the bureaucratic battles for us. And if they really suck, we can boot them out before this threshold is reached.

And don't even get my started on the NCMs. I have no idea where they found some of my peers. Sure they are better than many from **** countries, but some are "professional" in terms of service only. We should be comparing ourselves to Americans, Brits, Aussies etc. And I personally know at least one officer or NCO from each of those countries that think we are a joke.

 

[Blackadder1916]

Though the article referenced in the OP is written from the perspective of the US military since the discussion here has veered more to the Canadian experience, I'll provide a link to a couple of ORA reports that may provide some background.

An Assessment of the University Degree Policy for Canadian Forces Officers  (Sept 1997)
http://cradpdf.drdc-rddc.gc.ca/PDFS/zbb62/p508505.pdf

Models of Canadian Forces Officer Occupations Most Affected by University Degree Requirement  (May 1998)
http://cradpdf.drdc-rddc.gc.ca/PDFS/zbb61/p508381.pdf

Like a number of other "old timers" (maybe not when the earth was cooling, but there was still one or two dinosaurs roaming the earth) on this means I saw no problem with officers without degrees.  I was one of them, OCTP(M) - the "M" meaning "Men", in the days when men were men, and women were women, and officers were neither (according to my changing I-card anyway).  One of the things to remember in this discussion, which is more than about the singular issue of degreed officers, is that the pro non-degreed side of the argument seems to focus very much on the benefit of in-service evaluation and commissioning.  Back in the old days, with the exception of CFRP and SRCP,  all the Regular Force in-service commissioning plans mirrored a plan for candidates from civvy world (or the Reserves).  The non-degree option, OCTP, was usually limited to classifications (occupations) that most would term "pointy end" - Inf, Armd, Arty, Pilot, Air Nav, AEC, MARS - all the rest needed degrees to get in the door, though once in the door there were the odd few who moved between classifications still lacking a degree.

While there was a high percentage of officers lacking a university degree, they were mostly in the MOCs above and in a couple of odd occupations that mostly generated officers in-service through CFR and by voluntary (usually) transfer from those non-degreed MOCs.  Even though one may assume that since those many non-degreed officers were generated through OCTP (and the similar pre-unification separate services commissioning programmes that preceded it), it was the primary source of officers, that would be incorrect.  My assumption (I don't have the data at hand, only memory of studies/reports from the 1980s when I was part of an occupational analysis) is that a higher percentage of OCTPs stayed following their initial engagements when those with degrees left following completion of compulsory service.  The OCTPs were only meant to be the short term measure to fill the gaps left when enough university graduates (or individuals willing to exchange a paid university education for a period of service) could not provide sufficient officers.  Well, the requirement changed with society.  Back 30, 40, 50 years ago getting that university degree was a significant event, now not so much.  While we may have lost some good potential officers through the cracks because of the education requirement in the years since the policy change, is the CF so short of potential officer applicants who either have a degree or is willing to go to school to get one.  The CF was always wanting officers to have education, just, like in a lot of things it did, it got lazy and accepted the easy fix of non-degreed officers that ended up being the norm.  For those who say that more opportunity for commissioning for deserving currently serving NCM should be provided, I ask, is the purpose of any commissioning plan to generate officers or to reward soldiers?

And to get back to the OP article and it's American focus, though the US military was always more education (credential) demanding than us, they also commissioned individuals with degrees during times when there was a shortfall in recruiting university graduates.  And not during the World Wars.  As an individual example (and one that proves nothing about correlation of education and officership - their shades of Somalia), quite a few non-degreed individuals were commissioned through Officer Candidate School during the Vietnam War.  They were selected often on the basis of aptitude test scores and many went there straight from basic training (other ranks basic as privates) or perhaps after completing initial trades training.  One of them, who had dropped out of community college after a few months but got through basis and training as a company clerk but had high test scores, was Lieutenant William Calley.

 

[FJAG]

Reading through the original article, there is another way to look at the changes in educational attainment and officer programs. It is true that more people now have degrees than in 1940, but there are also many more people who have completed high school than in the 1940s. It may be that a degree is "worth less" comparatively than seventy years ago, but that does not make a degree less important as an officer program entrance requirement. A high school diploma also meant more in 1940 than it does in 2017 as a discriminator.

That degree on its own does not make somebody an officer, but it is a useful entrance requirement. They must go through CAF/branch education and training. One aspect of the greater percentage of folks with a degree is that some of the barriers from 1940 are gone or lessened.

We do have outstanding leaders in the CAF who do not require degrees - they are our great NCO corps. The  high school grad with leadership qualities will make a great MCpl/Sgt in a few years - they don't all have to go officer! We are blessed with both a professional officer corps and a professional NCO corps and we should be comfortable with that.

Cheers

The real question though isn't whether more education may have some value. The question is can the military make better use of those years especially since they are some of those where we are at our most vigorous and most impressionable. Why should we let them be spent sitting on our butts in a classroom?  op:

:cheers:

 

[daftandbarmy]

And, for Gawd's sake, let's hope that no one starts a discussion about the merits of 'Sergeant Pilots'.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergeant_pilot

"They were not paid much, their opportunities for promotion were limited, and they were treated harshly in training, but that did not stop three generations of enlisted aviators from becoming pilots in the Army Air Corps."

https://archive.is/20120717164532/http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=31103853

 

[FJAG]

And, for Gawd's sake, let's hope that no one starts a discussion about the merits of 'Sergeant Pilots'.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergeant_pilot

"They were not paid much, their opportunities for promotion were limited, and they were treated harshly in training, but that did not stop three generations of enlisted aviators from becoming pilots in the Army Air Corps."

https://archive.is/20120717164532/http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=31103853

Or like Warrant Officers in US Army Aviation? That's a US idea that I would support here (although, of course, their warrant officers are quite different from ours since under the Warrant Officer Flight Training Program the only educational requirement is grade 12 and there is no previous military experience required)

:cheers:

 

[Navy_Pete]

Which speaks to senior leadership confusing education and training, to my mind.  Unless there's a professional certification required - in the CAF, Doctors and Lawyers and Nurses and Pharmacists and Dentists are all I can think of - we should not be using the type of degree as a filter.  (I'm excluding Engineers from that list, since most CAF engineers do precious little engineering.  And most of the engineering could probably be done more effectively by civilians).

The most humorous part of some of those efforts is that they would disqualify the highest ranking Logistics officer in the CAF from being a Logistics officer.

Wrt the engineers portion, I think it's important to note a lot of engineers don't do much 'pure engineering'. Design is only one portion of the types of work you can do, and a lot of it is project management, business development, contract management, etc where you take your technical background lets you understand the issue without going full slide rule to redesign everything.

Very little of the CAF engineering work is what you would learn about in schools, but our training relies on a lot of background knowledge, and within DND we are increasingly going towards aligning a lot of our stuff with commercial practices, so having a P.Eng is already desirable and may become mandatory for certain positions. Sure, you can have the same job done by a civilian, but having someone that has been in the field doing it gives them a good appreciation of all the stuff that you wouldn't know otherwise because it won't be written down on a performance requirement anywhere. A good example is helmets that met all the requirements but failed field testing miserably because they didn't account for people using them as seats. Also, from a SWE point of view, we are cheaper than civilians doing the same jobs on the salary, with no concerns about OT etc when things get busy, and with the DEO stream, you don't actually pay for the education or have any 'lost time' for the paid degree.

I've used the stuff I learned at school a few times to do a bunch of calculations and verify our plan worked and would be safe, but I use the general skill sets I picked up while getting my education that were improved during my training every day. I can say the CAF has been great for developing the soft skills needed to actually lead people, and overall makes me a lot more effective now than if I had done just 'pure engineering' as a civilian and been put in the jobs I'm in now.

Probably a lot of officer roles that don't strictly need degrees, but I'd say the engineering jobs aren't one of them. We could train that internally, but it would probably cost way more and not really save any time, so not necessarily any real savings or net benefit.

 

[dapaterson]

If the majority of a trade is employed in administrative functions in Ottawa, it is questionable whether that function should be military.

But that's another discussion entirely...