Liberal Education and the Military Officer

Chief great and thought provoking questions. Personally I have served with ROTC, direct commission, OCS after long enlisted time, and OCS right after basic. I think that the person makes the type of officer not the commissioning source. Though I do believe that some majors do fit better with certain branches. It makes sense for criminal justice degree to go Military Police or Engineer go Engineer. As far as does one commissioning source know more about something that another? Truthfully all West Pointers have 2 years of engineering classes as that is what it originally was created to produce. So they should, in theory, be better and more qualified than others that do not have this training. However, that is why we all go to OBC or not BOLC to get trained. Once again I would say it comes down to what that individual decides to put into it as to what they bring to the table for the unit and the Army. The person makes the leader, not the education. As one LTC told me, "leadership is 90%". However, that leaves the 10% of knowing what the job.

Chief, lot of good questions that I will answer from my view/chair point by point:
1. Training at academy vs education at ROTC affect quality of officer and way they fit into branch role.
a. I disagree that the academies train and ROTC educates. Both the academies and ROTC educate and train. Education occurs via the curriculum required for a degree while training occurs generally in the summer for both on military specific areas.
b. Quality of officer. Both the academies and ROTC produce studs and duds. USMA may have a more consistent "shot group" being in one location vs 250+ ROTC locations but quality of officer is more a factor of quality of the cadet than it is quality of the program. Goes to old "nature vs nuture" argument.
c. How fit branch role? Some degrees dovetail into some branches better than others. Some branches have more specific requirements such as STEM than others.
2. Is there a better branch for certain majors? Yes. For example STEM are better suited for FA, EN, and CBRN but non STEM can be just as successful as in the EN, for example, as STEM.
3. Does ROTC with Econ degree understand SASO better than USMA? Maybe but depends. The Army Learning Strategy emphasizes life long learning along with training, education, and experience within the institutional, operational, and self domains. Understanding SASO is more of a factor of all of these combined than it has to do with commissioning source and degree alone. Goes to whole person concept.

A liberal education should educate the student on a broad (liberal) variety of subjects. As I've gone through my career, the importance of a liberal education has become clear to me. Our officers must be educated as thinkers and having a broad base upon which to base this thinking is critically important. The world constantly changes and the type of challenges our military faces change with it. Being able to think through new issues and develop solutions for unforeseen challenges is the responsibility of our officer corps. A liberal education helps them do so effectively.

My undergraduate education was from a technical school which focused on producing engineers and scientists - I enjoyed it because those were the subject areas I was most comfortable in. As I've gone through the years in uniform, I've realized that my military history and understanding of international relations was sorely lacking and have worked to increase this knowledge through self study, discussions, and military education opportunities. Just because I'm a competent engineer does not mean I'm an effective officer.

During my career I had the opportunity to teach at USMA and observe the much more liberal education that their cadets receive. Regardless of degree, they all have a wide variety of requirements (as LTC Purvis described). An engineering student at USMA takes many more humanities, political science, and philosophy courses than I did. An English literature student takes intense math, science, and engineering courses - unheard of for similar majors at a typical university. In my opinion, this starts all of them off on better educational footing.

As CPT Maurelli stated, the person determines the quality of officer much more than their commissioning source. The source just gets us started ... it's up to us to do something with it.