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

[Bruce Monkhouse]

"Critical thought"??  Apparently only allowed if you tape all your conversations. ....

 

[Journeyman]

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/01/whats-college-good-for/546590/

The part that caught my was "The labor market doesn’t pay you for the useless subjects you master; it pays you for the preexisting traits you signal by mastering them."

Good article, thanks; it mirrors much of what I think, particularly:

a) "Instead we must ask ourselves what kind of society we want to live in—an educated one or an ignorant one?"

b)  "I’m a cynical idealist. I embrace the ideal of transformative education. I believe wholeheartedly in the life of the mind. What I’m cynical about is people. I’m cynical about students. The vast majority are philistines. I’m cynical about teachers. The vast majority are uninspiring. I’m cynical about “deciders”—the school officials who control what students study. The vast majority think they’ve done their job as long as students comply."


I believe that university education can add to society in general, and the military in particular, because of "a."  However, the overarching system is broken because of "b"... in addition to the other points raised by the author.

First, our choice of society.  Look at many of the posts made on this site (or if a glutton for punishment, the comments section to CBC articles).  Charitably, some are based on naiveté or not staying in one's lane.  Many, unfortunately, come across as uninformed bigotry, obtuseness, or lack of exposure to other thoughts (and actually making informed judgements upon them).  I believe that further education could help all but the most determined to defend their right to be stupid.

However, our educational systems are failing, not merely because of uninspiring teachers, but because so many feel that their role is to provide ideological indoctrination rather than cultivating informed reasoning.  As a military person at a civilian university, I often heard about how I was personally responsible for all the world's problems and oppression.... often with significant venom.  I'm not sure if the graduates from those circles can be considered educated rather than ignorant, because there is no other side to their coin to be considered -- you either hug trees or you're irredeemably evil; one must always be offended on behalf of someone or something.

But even an awareness of their perspectives can assist in producing valid counter-perspectives and, as such, better leaders.  And I'm not advocating education just for officers, but for NCMs as well.  Some troops wouldn't believe an officer if he said the sun rises in the east, but the informed views of a respected Sgt will carry much weight.


As such, the more education the better..... hell, even the person who takes Art History can be beneficial when playing trivia in a bar.  :cheers:

 

[daftandbarmy]

But even an awareness of their perspectives can assist in producing valid counter-perspectives and, as such, better leaders.  And I'm not advocating education just for officers, but for NCMs as well.  Some troops wouldn't believe an officer if he said the sun rises in the east, but the informed views of a respected Sgt will carry much weight.

In the world of the Reserves it is possible to come across PhDs who also happen to be good machine gunners. It's an idea well past its time, to open up more educational opportunities to all ranks based on merit. We may even see Sergeant pilots (but I'm not going to bet my retirement on it.)

One of these days we'll have a ruthlessly rigorous 'University Program Selection' as well as CSOR, JTF2, etc etc selection course that has hundreds of well qualified applicants. That's when you know we're probably headed in the right direction, intellectually as well as technically.

 

[Journeyman]

In the world of the Reserves it is possible to come across PhDs who also happen to be good machine gunners.

To be fair, I had the real  military in mind.    :stirpot:

...besides where did they possibly get sufficient ammo and actual Sp Wpn range time to become good machine gunners?    :worms:



Disclaimer: First part is a joke; second part..... well....  :dunno:

;D 

 

[Oldgateboatdriver]

Well, one of our PO2 at MONTCALM was a Ph.d. student in nuclear physics. I can tell you that NBCD School was more than happy to see him back every summer to help making sure all the course materials were up to date and to make sure the staff was up to date on safety precautions.

 

[Rocky Mountains]

In 2017 the average young person has about 2 years of post-secondary.  Why wouldn't the military want officers to have an above average education?  As someone said, when you're paying a captain $90,000 why wouldn't you expect a degree?  I was in the reserves in an age when maybe somewhat less than half the officers had degrees and I saw no difference in capabilities.  Having a degree wasn't the only requirement, there were also interviews and boards to impress other officers that I had something of a personality capable of leadership and I fooled them.  What is the magic in a degree?  In my life, I've managed to earn 4 of them.  A whole whack of people I started university with failed to earn one.  Maybe persistence is a valued virtue.

 

[mariomike]

Maybe persistence is a valued virtue.

 

[dapaterson]

Bringing this back: Another American perspective.

The Army’s focus on making recruiting numbers and emphasizing characteristics associated with career longevity has created a self-licking ice cream cone among its officer corps. Meanwhile, across all commissioning sources, there has been both a relative and an absolute decline in the cognitive abilities of officers. This may matter little for the day to day operations of lieutenants, but if the Army wants to have the best possible operational and strategic thinkers to win wars it has no options for lateral entry. If large numbers of lieutenants are commissioning without cognitive screening, or with lowered standards, it will only produce field and general grade officers who are not intellectually equipped to deal with the complex problems of our nation’s defense.

https://www.jmoblues.com/post/the-intellectual-decline-of-the-army-officer-corps-why-army-officers-are-getting-dumber

 

[FJAG]

Bringing this back: Another American perspective.

https://www.jmoblues.com/post/the-intellectual-decline-of-the-army-officer-corps-why-army-officers-are-getting-dumber

So the take-away from this is that if we implemented cognitive evaluation at the intake level we probably wouldn't find enough officer candidates to fill the vacancies and we should therefore continue with our intakes as is but at some point during career progression we should test and prohibit all low performers from progressing.

Sounds better than the "gut feel and then justify" PER system that we use now.

Cynicism aside, that's a very thought provoking article and in a lot of ways explains a lot about why we are where we are these days.

:cheers:

 

[dapaterson]

My solution is to cap the officer corps at 16% of the CAF (vs 25% or so today).  Force decisions on what we want done where and how, instead of the "I want three more staff qualified majors for my HQ to perform ill-defined tasks way outside my mandate" that too often masquerades as senior leadership.

 

[FJAG]

My solution is to cap the officer corps at 16% of the CAF (vs 25% or so today).  Force decisions on what we want done where and how, instead of the "I want three more staff qualified majors for my HQ to perform ill-defined tasks way outside my mandate" that too often masquerades as senior leadership.

25%!!!!!. The US active military is 17% and the reserves 16% and that's already way too many.

I wish I'd seen that 25% statistic when I wrote "Unsustainable at Any Price" and was writing the chapter about our swollen headquarters and our unsupportable habit of clinging to Cold War era sized headquarters and full-time forces. Time for a v. 1.1

25%!!!!!. Lord Thunderin' Jesus. I bet we don't tell the politicians that whenever we go begging for more cash in our budget.

 

[daftandbarmy]

Draw from across a broader cross section of society (as the US did during conscription for Vietnam) and get a smarter Officer.... simples:

Understanding the steady and troubling decline in the average intelligence of Marine Corps officers

When the United States ended the draft and transitioned to an all-volunteer military in 1973, there was concern about who would join and whether the transition would negatively impact the quality of the force, which many suspected it would.

As it turns out, the quality of the force as a whole actually increased over time. In 1977, 27.1 percent of new enlisted recruits met the military’s standard for being “high quality,” meaning that they possessed a high school diploma and above-average intelligence relative to the U.S. population as a whole. Decades later, at the height of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, 60 percent of new enlisted recruits met the high quality standard.

But what about military officers? Though commissioned officers comprise only about 16 percent of the force, they clearly have a major impact on the success of the military as a whole given their leadership role for their troops and responsibility for strategy and tactics.

So are today’s officers up to the task?  In new research, Brookings’ Michael Klein and Tufts University’s Matthew Cancian—a former Marine officer who served in Afghanistan—take a closer look at this question and uncover a troubling pattern.

After analyzing test scores of 46,000 officers who took the Marine Corps’ required General Classification Test (GCT), Klein and Cancian find that the quality of officers in the Marines, as measured by those test scores, has steadily and significantly declined over the last 34 years.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brookings-now/2015/07/24/understanding-the-steady-and-troubling-decline-in-the-average-intelligence-of-marine-corps-officers/

 

[dapaterson]

After analyzing test scores of 46,000 officers who took the Marine Corps’ required General Classification Test (GCT), Klein and Cancian find that the quality of officers in the Marines, as measured by those test scores, has steadily and significantly declined over the last 34 years.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brookings-now/2015/07/24/understanding-the-steady-and-troubling-decline-in-the-average-intelligence-of-marine-corps-officers/

That explains dinner.

 

[dapaterson]

25%!!!!!. The US active military is 17% and the reserves 16% and that's already way too many.

I wish I'd seen that 25% statistic when I wrote "Unsustainable at Any Price" and was writing the chapter about our swollen headquarters and our unsupportable habit of clinging to Cold War era sized headquarters and full-time forces. Time for a v. 1.1

25%!!!!!. Lord Thunderin' Jesus. I bet we don't tell the politicians that whenever we go begging for more cash in our budget.

#Tangent


The QR&Os are open-ended about rank structure.  Unfortunately, I think we need directive policies, not open ended - with either the GiC or Parliament dictating "This many of this rank, this many of that rank" for the Reg F and P Res (Rangers, COATS and Sup Res are different).

Plus, the targets need to be expressed in a way that prevents gaming the system - for example, making 75% of P Res Sgts ongoing full-time to subvert the Reg F cap should be considered and explicitly prevented in the regulations (for example, a member of the Res F paid for more than 200 days in a calendar year shall be counted against the cap for the Reg F).

 

[daftandbarmy]

That explains dinner.

UNSAT... they are non-toxic

 

[FJAG]

#Tangent


The QR&Os are open-ended about rank structure.  Unfortunately, I think we need directive policies, not open ended - with either the GiC or Parliament dictating "This many of this rank, this many of that rank" for the Reg F and P Res (Rangers, COATS and Sup Res are different).

Plus, the targets need to be expressed in a way that prevents gaming the system - for example, making 75% of P Res Sgts ongoing full-time to subvert the Reg F cap should be considered and explicitly prevented in the regulations (for example, a member of the Res F paid for more than 200 days in a calendar year shall be counted against the cap for the Reg F).

I'm not sure about making that a parliamentary function but you may have noticed through my recent missives that I no longer trust the top layers of our military bureaucracy in making the right decisions for our force structure and management. So who does one trust?

As to the Class B fiasco, (and having been one for three years I know of what I speak), I do agree that we need to re-examine the whole system from top to bottom to determine which jobs in the military are full-time or ought to be part-time. That, however, takes you right back to the need to determine what the roles and missions of the CAF should be and which ones can be left to part-timers (assuming we also restructure the system at the same time to create a viable, equipped, trained and deployable reserve force).

I've always maintained that the big ticket items, such as major conflict, are rare occurrences for which you need a less expensive, larger and more capable stand-by force rather than an expensive full-time force that spends a fair bit of their salaries on pushing paper from one side of the desk to another or sweeping the gun shed and preparing one more time for the conflict that's on the distant horizon. We simply can't afford that any longer. The billions that Canada spends should get us more war-fighting capability than what we're getting. When you see the capabilities that our military leadership has cut, you can't help but conclude that they have no intention of ever letting us get into a real war. So much for deterrence.

There will always be short range  projects where you need to surge some reservists into Class B positions. The trouble is we've made Class B's a full 20 year career for some people and with the new pension system, that actually is what it really has become. We do need to stop gaming the system in that respect.

:cheers:

 

[Throwaway987]

Bringing this back: Another American perspective.

https://www.jmoblues.com/post/the-intellectual-decline-of-the-army-officer-corps-why-army-officers-are-getting-dumber

I found a link to the Hunter paper that was quoted (regarding General Mental Ability): https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Schmidt10/publication/232564809_The_Validity_and_Utility_of_Selection_Methods_in_Personnel_Psychology/links/53e2938f0cf216e8321e0625/The-Validity-and-Utility-of-Selection-Methods-in-Personnel-Psychology.pdf?origin=publication_detail


I always found it amusing that cognitive ability wasn’t assessed until the Col/CWO level. If GMA has been shown to offer significant value when selecting personnel when hiring, shouldn’t it also offer value when selecting personnel with promotions?

If CFAT testing is correlated with GMA and GMA is a valid predictor of CAF performance, could we retrospectively assess how our promotion decisions correlated with GMA? i.e. Do our senior leaders have high GMA values relative to their entry cohorts? Are there portion of the CAF where we disproportionally lose high GMA members since we didn’t select for cognitive ability until higher ranks?

How does selecting for GMA interact with selecting for characteristics associated with long military service (as suggested the JMO blog)?

My apologies if this is an awkward crossover with the PER thread. Feel free to move it over if it best belongs there.

 

[MilEME09]

There will always be short range  projects where you need to surge some reservists into Class B positions. The trouble is we've made Class B's a full 20 year career for some people and with the new pension system, that actually is what it really has become. We do need to stop gaming the system in that respect.

:cheers:

Because we allow our selves to put band aids on top of band aids, sure you stopped the bleeding but the wound is still open, cause harm to the body.

 

[Underway]

I found a link to the Hunter paper that was quoted (regarding General Mental Ability): https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Schmidt10/publication/232564809_The_Validity_and_Utility_of_Selection_Methods_in_Personnel_Psychology/links/53e2938f0cf216e8321e0625/The-Validity-and-Utility-of-Selection-Methods-in-Personnel-Psychology.pdf?origin=publication_detail


I always found it amusing that cognitive ability wasn’t assessed until the Col/CWO level. If GMA has been shown to offer significant value when selecting personnel when hiring, shouldn’t it also offer value when selecting personnel with promotions?

If CFAT testing is correlated with GMA and GMA is a valid predictor of CAF performance, could we retrospectively assess how our promotion decisions correlated with GMA? i.e. Do our senior leaders have high GMA values relative to their entry cohorts? Are there portion of the CAF where we disproportionally lose high GMA members since we didn’t select for cognitive ability until higher ranks?

How does selecting for GMA interact with selecting for characteristics associated with long military service (as suggested the JMO blog)?

My apologies if this is an awkward crossover with the PER thread. Feel free to move it over if it best belongs there.

CFAT isn't designed for and is not predictive of that far down your career.  CFAT only goes so far as your initial job posting.  Do you meet the minimum standard for your job.  And even then its only 60-70% predictive of success in combination with educational background and other job-related skills.  There are so many other factors that go into a successful career, some of that is luck.  Did you get injured, did you cohabitate with the right person who enabled your career, friction with other people on the job, the right position at the right time, was your training delayed, did you choose appropriate self-improvement etc...

 

[Throwaway987]

CFAT isn't designed for and is not predictive of that far down your career.  CFAT only goes so far as your initial job posting.

What’s your reasoning behind this? Is your argument that the CFAT has no correlation with GMA? Or that GMA has no correlation with future job performance?

And regarding not being predictive farther into one’s career, is it because of the lack of evidence or the evidence of no predictive value? I was proposing that it would be an amusing thing to explore...under the assumption that it has not already been looked at.

If CFAT+other factors has a correlation of 60-70%, that is totally in the same ballpark as the correlations identified in that study (interpreted by the authors to be high and meaningful).