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

[Steve Wilkins]

A degree guarantees a certain level of writing ability.

Oh how I wish this were so. Unfortunately though, a degree guarantees no such thing.

Generally speaking, this is true; however. I have seen many college grads here on AW, post with poor grammar, punctuation, spelling, capitalization, etc. Mostly due I suspect not to poor education, but to laziness or posting in a hurry. It gives the impression of an uneducated writer, and is a bad habit to get into.

I hear you, but internet forums tend to be a mesh between the spoken and written language. People do not speak like they write...or shouldn't anyway, and they also don't write like they speak (definite no no). This is not to say that we shouldn't expect folks to put together words and sentences to form a coherent thought. If you sound like a dumbass on the internet, then you probably are a dumbass.

Arriving "in the fleet", you will be expected to be an exceptional writer, as it will be a major part of your DivO/collateral duties. You will be writing letters, memos, instructions, messages, reports, periodic evals for your Sailors (and even roughing up your own FitReps), flight skeds/PODs, awards recommendations, classroom curriculii/lesson guides, etc. All these for chop by your 'front office', and approval by the CO. In summary your promotions, and those of your Sailors will depend in no small part, upon your ability to express yourself in writing.

I have met few officers that I would call exceptional writers, and even fewer that are good at writing Navy correspondence, fitreps, and evals.

***BTW I was told recently. that it is considered kosher nowadays, to recommend and rough up award reccomendations FOR YOURSELF! Admittedly, I am an old fart from a previous era, but back in our 'undeclared war' era, that would have been heresy. If true , it seems to me, a definite conflict of interest! Comments pro/con?

Not only kosher, but expected. It is not something I ever made my subordinates do because quite frankly, I disagree with it pretty strongly. The closest I came to making them write stuff up on themselves were providing eval/fitrep inputs in bullet point format.

 

[Steve Wilkins]

If the only way I could have become an officer was to first enlist for a few years (before or after college), and then MAYBE get a shot at being an officer, and then MAYBE a shot at pilot...well, i'm not sure I'd have wanted to waste my time or talent in such a manner.

Kind of funny you say it like that because that was exactly what I did. That was specifically why I joined and went into the nuke program. It definitely wasn't a waste of time for me, but I also wouldn't mandate officers needing prior E time before they can be commissioned. If I had the interwebs back in '91-92 time frame, I probably would have done it completely different.

 

[BusyBee604]

Oh how I wish this were so. Unfortunately though, a degree guarantees no such thing....


I have met few officers that I would call exceptional writers, and even fewer that are good at writing Navy correspondence, fitreps, and evals.

A college education used to include, and a degree guaranteed... excellent writing. I guess much of the classroom instruction time, formerly dedicated to writing skills, has been shifted to political 'brainwashing'!
BzB

 

[Steve Wilkins]

A college education used to include, and a degree guaranteed... excellent writing.

I long for those days I never knew.

 

[Pags]

A college education used to include, and a degree guaranteed... excellent writing. I guess much of the classroom instruction time, formerly dedicated to writing skills, has been shifted to political 'brainwashing'!
BzB

My college education guaranteed decent engineering writing... Not to be confused with good writing. No time for brainwashing in an engineering program.

 

[Swanee]

Oh how I wish this were so. Unfortunately though, a degree guarantees no such thing.

My degree in theatre required a fairly extensive amount of writing. I'll make the argument that those "crummy" liberal arts degrees are indeed worth something; and that they do teach one to write and speak eloquently when required. After all, we do judge one's intelligence by how well they speak and write.

 

[PropStop]

Kind of funny you say it like that because that was exactly what I did. That was specifically why I joined and went into the nuke program. It definitely wasn't a waste of time for me, but I also wouldn't mandate officers needing prior E time before they can be commissioned. If I had the interwebs back in '91-92 time frame, I probably would have done it completely different.

If I wasn't clear enough on my original post - that program wasn't something that'd work for me, but I am glad others do it. I cannot stress enough, the priors in the officer corps are a critical asset and I respect them greatly for both their continued dedication, experience and much greater understanding of the enlisted side of the house. That path simply wasn't for me and I don't think it's the only path for effective leaders. It is very necessary to pepper the officer ranks with mustangs though. Having an officer corps of entirely boat school, ROTC, or OCS pukes with no prior experience would be, I think, a disaster.

 

[BusyBee604]

Having an officer corps of entirely boat school, ROTC, or OCS pukes with no prior experience would be, I think, a disaster.

Hardly a disaster, but certainly the Officer Corps would not be quite as experience-rich in the JO ranks.
BzB, a prior

 

[LFCFan]

A college education used to include, and a degree guaranteed... excellent writing. I guess much of the classroom instruction time, formerly dedicated to writing skills, has been shifted to political 'brainwashing'!
BzB

Having had a stint standing in front of a classroom in academia at a Big State U, I can say that the kids are leaving high school unable to write to save their lives. And with 500 students in a freshman class, one prof and 3 grad students simply cannot grade that many papers and give good feedback. Unfortunately a lot of people don't bother giving papers to classes that size.

Take home message: send your kids to a liberal arts college or pay attention to the instructor/student ratio.

 

[BusyBee604]

Having had a stint standing in front of a classroom in academia at a Big State U, I can say that the kids are leaving high school unable to write to save their lives. And with 500 students in a freshman class, one prof and 3 grad students simply cannot grade that many papers and give good feedback. Unfortunately a lot of people don't bother giving papers to classes that size.

Take home message: send your kids to a liberal arts college or pay attention to the instructor/student ratio.

You nailed it, the biggest breakdown is in the grade & high schools, where the focus is more on banning pork in the cafeteria, and God from the Pledge Of Allegience, jnstead of ensuring kids are literate. 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

 

[exNavyOffRec]

A college education used to include, and a degree guaranteed... excellent writing. I guess much of the classroom instruction time, formerly dedicated to writing skills, has been shifted to political 'brainwashing'!
BzB

In general when I would review resume's the engineers are the ones with the resume's that were written the worst, the non tech guys were usually good, of course it seems with engineering jobs it is about the grades, when I had guys apply for NUPOC the motivational statement was a joke, I used to say an applicant could put in purple crayon the words "I want to be officer" and he would get in, one of my guys had a 2 line motivational statement and is now a nuke officer.

 

[robav8r]

It is very necessary to pepper the officer ranks with mustangs though. Having an officer corps of entirely boat school, ROTC, or OCS pukes with no prior experience would be, I think, a disaster.

^ This. The very best wardrooms I have been a part of were the ones with a wide variety of commissioning sources and a healthy percentage of priors. On a side, and slightly off-topic note, I have noticed that USNA grads always fall into two categories: really good and horrendously bad.

 

[Spekkio]

Arriving "in the fleet", you will be expected to be an exceptional writer, as it will be a major part of your DivO/collateral duties.

Eh. I'd say you're going to be expected to write in your XO's style, regardless of how well (or poorly) he writes, including liberal use of verbose Navy cliches, passive voice, and extra commas.

To the topic at hand: a college education teaches people additional perspective, basic knowledge on a broad range of subjects, the ability to manage their time, the ability to research information, the ability to critically analyze that information, and the ability to articulate it clearly.

Yes, there are some universities that are worthless for some (or all) of the above, but seemingly the Navy would weed out those applications, no?

I think it's rather self-evident to the people on this forum how a college education helps develop managerial and leadership ability via instilling an individual with those skillsets. Private companies also, for the most part, hire college educated people as their managers and decisionmakers. And if you get the classic "well Bill Gates..." you can point out that Gates attended Harvard for 3 years and had he filed to apply his AP credit, he would have graduated. He left because he realized that if he wasn't the first one to get into the PC O/S market, he would lose. He is college educated.

Now, if you want to talk about whether that education ought to be funded by taxpayers, that's a horse of a different color. I certainly think that the US gets its return on investment on USNA, STA-21, and NROTC scholarships, but would the Navy meet manning if those students had to pay their own college tuition? I don't know.

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.

The officer career is training you to be a CO, and a couple of years time as an enlisted Sailor just long enough to finish an in-rate PQS isn't going to give you a whole lot of advantages in that arena. Your time spent as a DIVO is when you get the perspective on what junior Sailors do on a day-to-day basis. As someone mentioned earlier, it would be fairly unsustainable to require people to enlist for 4-6 years to become an E-5+ before they could even apply for a commission. There simply wouldn't be enough takers for that deal. The Navy needs 4-and-out Officers, too.

However, if you're going to try to convince a know-it-all E-4 who has neither been to college nor ever had to manage a division, department, or ship, it might be a hard sell -- which is probably why R1 went with the 'hey, you could write an article to Navy Crimes to voice your opinion' option.

 

[Pags]

While there is truth to Spekkios thought that junior Sailors think that Os dont do any work; in their mind, if you're not needle gunning, you're not working, in my experience most of the Sailors know that Os do work and they get that it's work of a different flavor. There will always be some who are convinced that Os do nothing; most of these salt dogs are found in the smoke pit running their traps while their peers are busy working so everyone can knock off on time.

 

[Spekkio]

I didn't mean to imply all enlisted Sailors think that O's didn't earn their share, just the ones who will write rants about how requiring a college education for military leaders and allowing them to directly commission with no prior enlisted service is bullshit.

I've met some enlisted Sailors who have the aptitude to be good Officers sans a college education, but the existance of a minority of exceptionally bright individuals doesn't provide enough compelling evidence to overhaul the entire system.