The case against the military academies.

• Author: Shuger, Scott

Suppose that every engine in a General Motors car came from one of three GM plants. And suppose that the manufacturing cost of each of Plant A's engines is more than three times that of those made at Plant B and more than nine times those from Plant C. Further suppose that other than cost, there is no measurable difference between the engines no matter where they were made--not in their performance, nor in how long they last. Finally, imagine that Plant A is far and away the least productive of the three--it makes only a small percentage of the company's engines. Now, in order to maximize return on investment, GM should:

1) Close Plant A

2) Maintain the status quo

3) Have more Plant As

If you answered 1), you are still in the running to be the next Tom Peters. If you said 2), you probably don't subscribe to this magazine. On the other hand, if you said 3), quit reading this and call the personnel department at the Pentagon immediately. You've got what it takes to justify the continued existence of the nation's service academies.

That's because the details in this scenario are true if you substitute the words "military officers" for "engines," and "Pentagon" for "GM," and view Plant A as a service academy, Plant B as the university-affiliated Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC), and Plant C as the quick-and-dirty military training offered to college graduates by Officer Candidate Schools (OCS). As a means of producing military officers, a service academy is a perfect Plant A--more expensive (academy commissions cost about $250,000 apiece, compared to about $65,000 for those coming from ROTC and about $25,000 for those earned through OCS), less productive (the academies together produce only about 16 percent of all new officers, compared to 64 percent for ROTC and 20 percent for OCS), and with no discernible difference in the results (when compared to the other officer pipelines, Academy graduates don't outperform other officers). They don't remain on active duty significantly longer. Indeed, five of the six incumbent Joint Chiefs are not academy graduates. But in spite of this, we haven't eliminated Plant A for officers--in fact, we have three of them (West Point, Annapolis, and the Air Force Academy).

So here's a suggestion for downsizing the military that the Pentagon's "bottom-up review" and Al Gore's National Performance Review missed: Abolish the service academies. As we shrink the military, we're going to have to reduce officer...