In case you didn't know, the Navy's changing its rules for NROTC scholarships for next year. Under the new rules, 85% of incoming scholarship mids have to have a "tier 1" or "tier 2" major. You can find the list of these on the NROTC website. Midshipmen who try to change to a "tier 3" major (which is pretty much any liberal arts major) after receiving the scholarship could potentially be stripped of it.
What do yall think of this? Obviously, it doesn't affect me, but I still think it's bullshit. Does the Navy have any empirical evidence suggesting that we history majors make crappier officers than engineers? No, we may not have had some of the information you see in the fleet while in school, but thousands of officers have gone through without problems with their history, music, and English degrees. Isn't that the reason we take the two semesters of physics and calc, so that we have the tools to understand the mechanical concepts when we get to the fleet?
Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't USNA even have a more liberal policy than this? I seem to remember when applying that they said 1/3 of USNA mids were engineers, 1/3 were math and science, and 1/3 could be liberal arts. Granted, yall get BS degrees no matter what, but why doesn't the Navy simply require NROTC scholarship mids to take some of the classes all USNA mids take, such as chemistry? While each individual school may still not award you a BS, if they standardized these technical classes, wouldn't you accomplish the same thing?
Also, why not create a positive reinforcement system to encourage people to go to a technical major, instead of effectively preventing those of us with liberal arts bends from joining the program? Why not do something like give technical majors more stipend money?
Finally, is this the Navy's push to make more people go nuke? If so, they are going to fail miserably. If they want people to go nuke, they should make nuke suck less. The class below mine at my ROTC unit, for example, has 15 Navy option mids who are not nurses. Of those 13 are engineering majors. Guess how many of them want to go nuke? Zero. Furthermore, excluding the 3 kids in my class who went naval reactors (which apparently was a really weird incident) of the 5 people from my unit in the classes of 2006, 2007, and 2008 who went nuke, 3 of them were nontechnical majors!
I do not see a good future for the NROTC program under this policy. First, fewer people are going to apply because they will see their chances as futile. I know I wouldn't be in the program, and since I could not have afforded to go to my school (or the only other one that accepted me) without the scholarship, I would not be a naval officer now. Also, I foresee this causing much more attrition in the program. Kids who don't want to be engineers are going to apply for the program as engineers because they won't be able to get the scholarship otherwise, and they won't be able to handle the work. Some people are not cut out to be engineers, but why does that mean they are not cut out to be naval officers?
What do yall think of this? Obviously, it doesn't affect me, but I still think it's bullshit. Does the Navy have any empirical evidence suggesting that we history majors make crappier officers than engineers? No, we may not have had some of the information you see in the fleet while in school, but thousands of officers have gone through without problems with their history, music, and English degrees. Isn't that the reason we take the two semesters of physics and calc, so that we have the tools to understand the mechanical concepts when we get to the fleet?
Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't USNA even have a more liberal policy than this? I seem to remember when applying that they said 1/3 of USNA mids were engineers, 1/3 were math and science, and 1/3 could be liberal arts. Granted, yall get BS degrees no matter what, but why doesn't the Navy simply require NROTC scholarship mids to take some of the classes all USNA mids take, such as chemistry? While each individual school may still not award you a BS, if they standardized these technical classes, wouldn't you accomplish the same thing?
Also, why not create a positive reinforcement system to encourage people to go to a technical major, instead of effectively preventing those of us with liberal arts bends from joining the program? Why not do something like give technical majors more stipend money?
Finally, is this the Navy's push to make more people go nuke? If so, they are going to fail miserably. If they want people to go nuke, they should make nuke suck less. The class below mine at my ROTC unit, for example, has 15 Navy option mids who are not nurses. Of those 13 are engineering majors. Guess how many of them want to go nuke? Zero. Furthermore, excluding the 3 kids in my class who went naval reactors (which apparently was a really weird incident) of the 5 people from my unit in the classes of 2006, 2007, and 2008 who went nuke, 3 of them were nontechnical majors!
I do not see a good future for the NROTC program under this policy. First, fewer people are going to apply because they will see their chances as futile. I know I wouldn't be in the program, and since I could not have afforded to go to my school (or the only other one that accepted me) without the scholarship, I would not be a naval officer now. Also, I foresee this causing much more attrition in the program. Kids who don't want to be engineers are going to apply for the program as engineers because they won't be able to get the scholarship otherwise, and they won't be able to handle the work. Some people are not cut out to be engineers, but why does that mean they are not cut out to be naval officers?
