I’ve generally had a positive view of the service academies (despite the occasional scandal). In this article, an Annapolis prof presents quite a different view: “Our military academies aren’t filled with best and brightest. They are a boondoggle, on your dime, and serve no one.” He advocates abolishing them.
Old news… he has been at this for years.
I have many issues with the article. I am admitted academy grad and some of what the author says about high ego after graduation is true. But much is definitely colored by his own perceptions. For instance the prep school which is “purely to get kids up to standard” is not necessarily true. Some students go to the prep school because their congressman has already used up all his slots and they have to wait for someone to graduate the following year. Some have to do a prep school year because they came from the military ranks and haven’t taken the SAT or ACT. We could also get into the SAT comparisons with U Md, a very good flagship U which offers merit aid to entice top students vs. a military academy that has representatives from all 50 states. Also at one point the author stated he didn’t know how students were selected but he sat on the admissions board some years ago. Definitely a slanted view.
This story gets even more interesting…
I was just about to say…this guy must have tenure, because otherwise they would’ve gotten rid of him a long time ago.
The thing that characterizes his screed, though, is that there is no good evidence nor any hardcore facts or even anecdotes supporting his claims. He claims that taxpayers see no benefit from the service academies without offering any reason for us to believe that. (I counter that there is at least some benefit in having highly trained technical experts, and the service academies overwhelming train engineers and other STEM professionals - even if you don’t believe that having a highly-educated military leadership corps is important.) He says that the academies are not fulfilling their missions or upholding their ideals - but doesn’t give any reason for us to agree with him. He says that the service academies are “the most generous government giveaway going” without providing any figures to support that assertion.
He says that service academy students are not the best and the brightest, but there’s actual evidence to the contrary of that. First of all, SAT scores are not the only or even the most important metric of who are the ‘brightest’ students. That aside, though, data on SAT scores show that the University of Maryland’s middle 50% SAT scores are about on par with all the service academies.* (The absolute mean might be slightly, but not statistically significantly, higher than the academies’.) I’d also like to point out that a score of 600 puts a student in the top 25% of test-takers across the country on both sections; the averages on both sections are closer to a 660 CR and a 680 M, which puts a student in the top 10% of test-takers across the country. So 75% of Naval Academy students are in the top 25% of SAT test-takers across the country, and fully half of them are in the top 10%. Not to mention that the overwhelming majority are in the top quarter of their high school class (with most in the top 10%) and also had to show excellence in athletic and fitness pursuits, leadership activities, and secure a Congressional recommendation. How is that not “the best and the brightest”?
Some of his points are just ridiculous. For example, he complains that students have to take mandatory classes, which is a fact of life at every college. Two of the classes he complains that are unnecessary or won’t be used later are leadership and cybersecurity, which he says is an elementary computer knowledge class. Many colleges require elementary computer classes, though - mine, did, too; you had to take a placement test to get out of it. And…he doesn’t think leadership classes are important for students who are explicitly being trained to be leaders of one the world’s most powerful military forces? I’m also skeptical about his claim that most students don’t come for the experience of going to a service academy. Most students know what they’re getting into when they go to a service academy, and any student who can get into the service academies would also probably be very competitive for an ROTC scholarship at a civilian college or university.
And so it goes - big on opinion and emotion, but short on any evidence to support his claims. I’m not even saying that I necessarily disagree with him; I don’t even know whether I do agree with him, because he hasn’t provided me with anything to really mull over or think about other than “this random English professor who teaches at a service academy thinks they should be shut down.” And then when asked for an alternative, he says this:
So what’s a better alternative to these if the service academies aren’t? Deep Springs, despite its positive portrayal in the recent movie “Ivory Tower,” isn’t it—I know, I taught there a term. Their students are antisocial and rendered comatose by getting up at 4 a.m. to milk the cows. The top-flight liberal arts colleges aren’t a solution in themselves either—I graduated from Haverford at age 19, after turning down Ivies, because it felt so stifling. I didn’t like the University of Chicago, my first graduate school, which was controlling—only Vanderbilt, where I got my Ph.D., offered me freedom
Which further just makes him sound like an overall disgruntled, unappeasable person. I hope he doesn’t hope to move on from the naval academy; speaking for myself, if I were in a position to make hiring decisions, I wouldn’t want to hire anyone who had a history of negatively speaking out about every school they’ve ever been associated with without any good reason, particularly if they are going to be a role from which I can’t fire them.
*I think this is more a testament to how talented Maryland’s students are rather than how bad the service academies’ students are.
Completely false. Please provide a link that even hints that this is true.
I know this to be true because I know people that happened to. My next room neighbor at an academy was in the prep school (recruited for track) because she really wanted to attend and her congressman didn’t have a vacancy. It sure wasn’t to get her SATs up - she graduated with a 3.9+ in premed while running track.
While running track. She was a recruited athlete and THEY parked her in the prep program. Do yourself and the others on this site a favor. Send an email to your local MOCs and ASK them whether THEY actually do this. I know that they do NOT.
It is the primary function of our government to squander dollars. We could easily live without the military academies and there is little doubt that there are better alternatives. In the meantime, we probably should be more interested in analyzing what happens to the graduates and look at reducing the number but ensuring a full career in the military and a “first in the line of fire” dedication to what the military should stand for. A pipeline to a short career and a stint as Beltway Bandits’ consultants is probably not what the founders of the academies at in mind.
@aglages - While I don’t personally know of anyone that this is happened to, it’s not beyond imagination that this would happen. Congress members are only allowed to have 5 midshipmen under their nomination at the naval academy at any one time, and I think they have a limit to how many nominations they can give out per year.
Some investigation reveals that the prep school is primarily for students who are borderline for the academies and could be improved in a year, and especially for racial/ethnic minorities and students from low SES backgrounds who aren’t competitive for admission but could be improved. About 1/3 of the NAPS class are recruited athletes, and it seems that significant proportions of the best athletes at the academies came in through prep school (see this article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/college-inc/post/naval-academy-prep-school-asset-or-liability/2011/10/19/gIQAlDLPyL_blog.html). In any case, none of these things makes the academies differ much from elite universities. Many elite universities offer deferred admission to recruited athletes (or development admits or legacies) to give them a semester or year to improve before beginning (they just don’t have a formal program for it). And a lot of top universities have formal summer programs for pre-freshman, largely URMs and low-income students, who need extra prep before they can begin.
My thing is that I’m not really sure why that’s a bad thing. The goal is to take the best and the brightest, not just those who have the luck to have been born in favorable conditions to manifest their brilliance. If you can take a group of borderline candidates and in a year of prep school turn 60% of them into someone competitive for the naval academy (which is what NAPS does), then…I think that’s success!
@juillet I agree with pretty much all that you’ve posted and have been aware of how the prep school has been operating for years. That said…the prep school operates to benefit the Academies and enlisted personnel attempting to make the transition. It does NOT exist to benefit the MOCs by allowing them to “park” fully qualified applicants in the school until an Appointment is freed up in their quota. MOCs have absolutely NOTHING to do with who is selected for the prep school and can NOT request that one of the applicants take a valuable prep school slot to wait until the next round of Nominations. I believe @Erin’s Dad is doing a disservice to any applicant that thinks “just because they were close” but didn’t get an Appointment that their MOC can just park them in the Prep school until they have a “free” nomination. It absolutely does not work that way.
@aglages perhaps the process has changed since I went to an academy. The wording on the Prep School admission page doesn’t help in making anything clear. http://academyadmissions.com/the-experience/prep-school/prep-school-admissions/
I would just suggest that some members of Congress might be able to make things happen that technically aren’t supposed to happen.
When politics, power and money are involved anything is possible. That said it’s not supposed to happen and I would question why it would. Most MOCs don’t even bother to interview the applicants for their nominations…they have committees and assigned staff persons. Is it POSSIBLE that the son/daughter of a big political donor might get favorable treatment? Sure…but how many children of very high income families would choose to go to a service academy and why wouldn’t the MOC just give those very few applicants their nomination or tell them to reapply next year after a year in a civilian college that their families could certainly afford? Bottom line…again…is the prep schools are NOT used to park applicants for MOCs until they have another slot available.