The widespread presupposition at service academies is that their graduates make better officers than those from any other commissioning source. It's an article of faith. But is it true?

I ask because my impression is that this conviction of the superiority of service academy officers is not shared either in the officer corps or enlisted ranks. In fact, I've never heard anyone in the fleet seriously argue that ROTC officers are inferior as a group to service academy products taken as a group. And if ROTC and OCS produce officers that are just as good officers as service academy products, that should give us pause to think. Are the service academies really worth what the entail?

They entail a lot. First off the academies, by their own calculation, are considerably more expensive to the taxpayers than ROTC programs. The most recent figure I heard for the Naval Academy was $280,000. It's quoted by high schools that keep a tally of the monetary value of scholarships won by their graduates at colleges and universities. One high school I heard about listed acceptances by one student at both USNA and USAFA as separate sums, thereby claiming “scholarships” of over half a million dollars for that one young man. I've never quite understood where this figure comes from. Perhaps it includes pro-rated amounts for maintaining the YP (Yard Patrol) boats and summer cruises on ships and subs? ROTC by contrast pays for tuition for four years at civilian schools, nowhere near the same ballpark.

But even if it cost the same to produce an academy officer as it costs to produce a ROTC officer, there would be other reasons for asking if the academies are worth what they entail. The midshipmen complain all the time about absolutely all aspects of the system. Not that complaints by themselves cut much ice with me. I'm well aware that “a grumblin' sailor is a happy sailor,” as one of my prior-enlisted students reminded me. In fact, over the years I've learned to block out the background-level complain-to-cope whining, as well as the complaints I have no sympathy with (Sir, we can't have keg parties). But the fact is that midshipmen do have to do a lot of things that somebody in ROTC doesn't do. Do these contribute to the end product?

Their liberty is severely curtailed, for starters: in ROTC, students put on a uniform a couple of times a week and their evenings are their own, not to mention all of the non-uniform days. Plebe year is no fun by anyone's estimation, what with all that chopping in the halls, the squaring of corners, the being asked professional knowledge at meals when all you want to do is eat, and having to make motivational bulletin boards (bulletin boards for college students!). Even upper-class midshipmen are yelled at, do PT in the rain, and forced to do all sorts of odd things.

All this impacts academics, my own little corner of the carpet. They are doing so many other things that frequently their work is perfunctory, and their attention is always somewhere else. That's not true of students at civilian schools who have the freedom to actually concentrate on the mind-work of classes (though they may not exercise it), not having to make bulletin boards or prepare for a come-around or memorize rates. (Has anybody ever shown that memory is significantly enhanced by having to learn menus?)

What about our vaunted “leadership” lessons? Here's where my opening questions becomes so important. Whatever the intention behind many of the things we do (and many things have all but lost a sense of intention; they're just “tradition”), if they don't produce better officers they fail. So that's my question: do they?

Instead of asking people in the fleet, as I'm doing here, my students try to prove to me that what we do just has to produce better officers. “Sir,” they say, “it must! We have to put up with so much more!”

This is odd logic. The proof of the pudding should be in the eating: does what we do make better officers? Not: Academy officers have to be better officers because of x, y, and z.

We read that Academy graduates have higher retention rates. Yet who's to say this is due to the Academy rather than the type of people who come to the Academy? Many midshipmen arrive from families with Navy connections, and came in thinking they would make a career of the Navy. If for a moment we postulate a world without the service academies, these same people would do NROTC at Tulane, Vanderbilt, or Penn (or Mississippi State). Who's to say they wouldn't have had the same commitment?

We hear that flag officers are still largely Academy graduates. But again, the problem is that we have no control group to isolate the determining factor. Who's to say this isn't the effect of the “old boy network,” a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy?

I don't know whether the academies produce better officers than a more relaxed and academic environment at a civilian school where ROTC officers have developed alongside civilians. I'm unnerved by the fact that I don't hear from the fleet the same “of course they do” response that's so rote at the academies.