"Get rid of OCS...Having a degree does absolutely nothing to make you an effective manager."

[Swanee]

Oh, and no students can be allowed to fail or repeat a grade... so as not to damage the student's fragile self-image.
BzB

My mother teaches at performing arts magnet school and yet she has to deal with this. Some kids are admitted under "diversity" and don't have to audition to earn their spot. My mother tried to fail one kid whose basic sentence structure was on the elementary school level at best. She was told that she had to grade upon that child's ability and not at the ability my mother expects. We're talking about a 17 year old kid who is expecting that they are going to get into a college yet doesn't understand how to speak or write a sentence as well as my 12 year old nephew; much less who can't read and analyze a David Mamet script as a student in a magnet school.

To say we've gone overboard with the self image, and everyone gets a trophy, and how everyone is equal is an understatement.

 

[Steve Wilkins]

If I wasn't clear enough on my original post - that program wasn't something that'd work for me....

You were clear. It's just not often I sit down and think about how low my chances actually were of getting a pilot slot by enlisting first. There are a lot of hurdles and inherent risks in that process. But when I was 17 making that decision, failure was not an option so the hurdles and risks be damned. Your post was kind of a reminder that going that route is kind of silly if 1) you know you want to be an officer and 2) you know exactly what you want your specialty to be.

When I signed my enlistment papers, I had already been accepted to Cal Poly's aerospace engineering program. But truth be told though, I really wanted to go to the Naval Academy and decided my best bet at getting there was by enlisting. Fast forward three years later after going through the nuke pipeline and then BOOST, I was tired of playing the little reindeer games. I could have easily gone to the Academy had I chosen to after BOOST. All I had to do was say the word, but I was in the mood for a little more freedom and a higher female/male ratio. So, I went to UF and majored in criminology. I intensely regret majoring in criminology instead of engineering, but I will say that the track and electives I chose required me to read and write a lot. I know for a fact that being a decent writer made me a better officer not only for my chain of command above me, but also the people that worked for me. My nuclear training and prior enlisted time didn't necessarily make me a better officer, but I know it made be a better SWO.

 

[Flash]

A retired Army Colonel suggested something similar in Tom Ricks' blog last year, get rid of West Point and ROTC and make everyone enlist and then serve in the NG or Reserves while going through college before getting commissioned. Many commenters pointed out the obvious flaws in it, another bright idea that doesn't seem to have been thought through that well.

 

[xj220]

Along the lines of picking degrees:
http://theinsanerobin.tumblr.com/video/11024245915

 

[LFCFan]

On a side, and slightly off-topic note, I have noticed that USNA grads always fall into two categories: really good and horrendously bad.

I do not have enough experience to speak to this, but I've always thought that it must be more challenging to look at a bunch of teenagers and ask "Who is going to be a good officer in a few years?" (USNA) than looking at a stack of college grads and ask "Who is going to be a good officer in a few months?" (OCS) I'm not sure how far out NROTC works, so I can't fit it in.

 

[AllYourBass]

This paragraph.

As far as requiring 2 years of enlisted service, there is very little that being a junior enlisted Sailor will offer an Officer in the bigger scheme of things. Really, guys who try to argue this are actually trying to voice that they think you've never had to do any kind of manual labor like clean a bathroom and you should have to pay your dues before you get to walk around with a flashlight on field day instead of dive a bilge coated with 2190 and the last ERLL's urine. They think that the Navy is your very first job because it's their very first job, they have no idea what the officer training pipeline is like, and it isn't 'fair' that you get to boss them around and get more privileges on day 1 out of college. So understand that guys are generally not making the argument because they've extensively researched how this would be better, they're making it because it fits their sense of social justice.

 

[PropStop]

You were clear. It's just not often I sit down and think about how low my chances actually were of getting a pilot slot by enlisting first. There are a lot of hurdles and inherent risks in that process. But when I was 17 making that decision, failure was not an option so the hurdles and risks be damned. Your post was kind of a reminder that going that route is kind of silly if 1) you know you want to be an officer and 2) you know exactly what you want your specialty to be.

When I signed my enlistment papers, I had already been accepted to Cal Poly's aerospace engineering program. But truth be told though, I really wanted to go to the Naval Academy and decided my best bet at getting there was by enlisting. Fast forward three years later after going through the nuke pipeline and then BOOST, I was tired of playing the little reindeer games. I could have easily gone to the Academy had I chosen to after BOOST. All I had to do was say the word, but I was in the mood for a little more freedom and a higher female/male ratio. So, I went to UF and majored in criminology. I intensely regret majoring in criminology instead of engineering, but I will say that the track and electives I chose required me to read and write a lot. I know for a fact that being a decent writer made me a better officer not only for my chain of command above me, but also the people that worked for me. My nuclear training and prior enlisted time didn't necessarily make me a better officer, but I know it made be a better SWO.

Gotcha. I commend you for having the maturity at the time to join as enlisted - I did not. I think I only gained the maturity to be an officer when i was a late state LT! Late bloomer me.

 

[Spekkio]

My mother tried to fail one kid whose basic sentence structure was on the elementary school level at best. She was told that she had to grade upon that child's ability and not at the ability my mother expects.

To say we've gone overboard with the self image, and everyone gets a trophy, and how everyone is equal is an understatement.

This is the culmination of years (decades maybe?) of parents raising hell when little Johnny gets a bad grade and school principals appeasing them.

Case in point: An acquaintance of my wife posted a huge facebook rant when her child got a 'sloppy' comment on a handwriting assignment. She started going off on how she's going to meet with the teacher and principal and demand to know why the teacher isn't complimenting her child's other good qualities instead of criticizing her, when a much healthier response would've been spending an extra 15 minutes a day with the child practicing handwriting.

The other side of the coin is that schools have also responded to this pressure with a slew of retarded written zero tolerance policies that suspend or expel students immediately for certain behavior issues so that parents can't raise hell about how little Johnny is an angel and couldn't possibly have done anything wrong and deserves a second chance, or that the school is coming down hard on him because he's [insert non-white race]. That's how you get stories such as the one where an 8th grade honors student girl was expelled for 'making a bomb' by screwing around in chemistry lab (done that myself, got us out of class for 15 min while the teacher put on the exhaust fume hood, no expulsion for being an alleged terrorist though). You want to stop the supposed bullying 'crisis' people are up in arms about, stop handing out 5 day auto suspensions or expulsions for both kids involved in a physical confrontation without finding out why the fight occurred and who really was at fault.

 

[BigRed389]

That's how you get stories such as the one where an 8th grade honors student girl was expelled for 'making a bomb' by screwing around in chemistry lab (done that myself, got us out of class for 15 min while the teacher put on the exhaust fume hood, no expulsion for being an alleged terrorist though).

If Breaking Bad has taught us anything, it's that every HS chemistry teacher has repressed criminal tendencies. There's absolutely no other explanation for going into a profession where you have to tell students what NOT to do with chemicals, and what kind of AWESOME things will happen if you do those things they specifically tell you not to do.

 

[BackOrdered]

If Breaking Bad has taught us anything, it's that every HS chemistry teacher has repressed criminal tendencies. There's absolutely no other explanation for going into a profession where you have to tell students what NOT to do with chemicals, and what kind of AWESOME things will happen if you do those things they specifically tell you not to do.

+1 just because Breaking Bad is/was an awesome show.