Recently, while engaged in some good natured ribbing of an Army friend of mine, he shot back with a strong barb about how Army officers were much better educated than their Navy counterparts. In fact, he said that an Army officer was nearly twice as likely to hold a graduate degree than a naval officer. Thinking back to my numerous interactions with my fine colleagues in the U.S. Army, I immediately rejected his comment as heresy. We were the refined, well-educated, elite — never to be compared with the hoi polloi masses in the Army. Convinced that we were on the vanguard of recognizing the direct connection between education, opportunity and performance, I set out to pull the data to disprove my obviously misinformed colleague. Fellow sailors and Marines, stop reading here unless you want your mental model of our sea services fundamentally altered. What I discovered was as shocking as it was disappointing. 
 
Raise Flag Oscar. According to the Defense Manpower Data Center (DMDC) Fiscal Year 2004 End Strength Report, 35 percent  of all Army officers hold at least a graduate degree. Compare that with 16 percent  in the Navy and Marine Corps. So, my friend in camouflage was correct, Army officers are more than twice as likely to hold a graduate degree than their peers in the Navy. The story on the enlisted side of the house is equally as concerning. Nearly 5 percent of the entire enlisted Army holds a bachelors degree or higher. In the Navy and Marine Corps, it is 2.6 percent  and 1.1 percent , respectively. Unfortunately, it gets worse.

Current Enrollments. According to DMDC’s 2004 Voluntary Education Fact Sheet, there were 319,000 Army undergraduate course enrollments last year compared to 165,000 in the Navy. As the Army is approximately 60 percent  larger than the Navy (30 percent normally, but one needs to add in recalled reserve and guard personnel), the data must be normalized by population. Even with those generous adjustments, Army troops are taking 20 percent  more courses than their Navy counterparts. Again, according to the same report and applying the same conversion factor, Army personnel completed 150 percent  more graduate degrees in 2004 than their peers in the Navy.

Okay, it’s time for six short blasts and a quick Anderson turn to bring us around and understand how we’ve fallen so far behind — and at least identify a few of the causal factors that led to this surprising education gap.

Investing in our people. Again citing that very informative DMDC education survey, the Army invested $217 million in tuition assistance in 2004. Contrast that with just $70 million by our Navy. After applying that generous population conversion factor of 60 percent , the Army is still outspending the Navy 2-to-1 for assistance. Unfortunately, this is not just an indicator of less demand by sailors, it is in part due to the fact that the Navy limits tuition assistance to 12 credit hours per year while the Army does not. The Army (and most other services) cap tuition assistance at $4,500, while the Navy pays out only $3,000 per year. Although the rigors of at-sea deployments have traditionally been less conducive to degree completion, technology has enabled a vast proliferation of innovative distance education programs, making it as easy as ever to complete a degree from anywhere in the world. It’s time that all service members receive the same tuition benefit, regardless of what color uniform they wear. 

Valuing Education. The Navy recently mandated that to make E-8, sailors would have to hold at least an associate’s degree or equivalent. This Professional Military Education Continuum will eventually require a bachelor’s degree for advancement to E-9. Well done, Navy, but don’t stop there.

Although it’s a subjective observation, many of my Navy colleagues hold the belief that selection boards appear to value experience far more than education. In fact, when push comes to shove in a selection board, we often choose the officer who has taken the hard jobs (with competitive fitness reports) over those who took time off to earn a subspecialty (post-graduate school, civilian colleges, etc.). There is no easy answer, but I believe taking a page out of the Army or Air Force playbooks might be worth considering. In most cases, officers (and many enlisted) are expected to earn their graduate degrees to progress in their careers. It’s become the price to play. And, as you know, this trend is also mirrored in general society, where a bachelor’s degree has displaced a high-school education as the key to landing a good job. This trend will likely continue.

We need to mandate equal benefits across the services, value life-long learning and accomplishment, and make closing the Navy and Marine Corps education gap a priority. In the increasingly educated global economy, a college or graduate degree is no longer a differentiator – it is a requirement.

This article originally appeared in Proceedings magazine.