I do not consider myself a conservative, at least not in the usual sense. I strongly identify with the antiwar movement, for example. But I agree with some principles that conservatives espouse. Let’s start with a few principles I associate with conservatism:
1. Taxpayer money should not be wasted.
2. Government should not control people’s choices unnecessarily.
The Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) pays scholarships for undergraduates in exchange for training and a commitment to pursue a commission as an officer. In addition to a four-year degree, ROTC students get training from military instructors. Most of the costs of ROTC training are borne by the Federal Government, in addition to the cost of providing scholarships.
Studies by the Congressional Budget Office in 1990 and at the Navy Supply Corps School in 2004 compared the costs to graduate and commission an officer from ROTC versus two other possible commissioning sources: a service academy and an Officer Candidate School (OCS). OCSes exist for each branch of the military, and make it possible for degree holders to become commissioned officers after 10-16 weeks of training after graduation from college. Stanford graduates are eligible to attend an OCS. Therefore a Stanford undergraduate does not have to go through ROTC to become a commissioned officer.
Both of these studies show that OCSes are significantly cheaper for the government than either the service academies or ROTC. Does spending more for ROTC produce significantly better officers? This question has also been studied, and the answer is no. The CBO study did not find major differences across the three commissioning sources in either performance or retention of officers, and later studies also found small or mixed differences between ROTC- and OCS- trained officers.
From these data, it appears that the military would spend less money training officers, with no sizable loss in officer quality or retention, if it trained all of them in OCSes, at least after the initial increase in capacity for these schools. Since ROTC training costs more than OCSes even without a scholarship, the government could also pay for the same number of general-purpose undergraduate scholarships as ROTC currently provides, on top of OCS training for all of those currently trained in ROTC, and it would still save money. And these scholarships could all be need-based, unlike ROTC scholarships, giving more students the opportunity to attend college. Thus a good case can be made that ROTC is wasting taxpayer money, violating conservative principle #1 above.
An ROTC scholarship comes with many strings attached for the student who has one. Scholarships generally require approval of a student’s major before money is awarded (with changes also requiring approval), and may restrict the recipient to a narrower range of majors than would otherwise be available to them. Students are often restricted in their summer activities as well. After one or two years (depending on the branch), ROTC scholars must commit to between four and eight years in the military following graduation, thus eliminating or significantly delaying the freedom to pursue other career options.
The existence of OCSes shows that restricting the freedom of undergraduates in this way is unnecessary. Students could wait until after they graduate, go to an OCS, and receive a commission. Thus, their decisions about both their majors and their careers could be made later, at the same time as their fellow students, and without limiting other options. Competition to get into an OCS appears to have increased recently, so that ROTC may currently provide a surer path to a commission, but this is a function of priorities among commissioning sources and is not immutable from a policy standpoint.
We can compare ROTC as it presently exists with an alternative in which less government money is spent, providing the same number of scholarships and the same number of opportunities to become a military officer, without requiring premature commitments to majors and a career by undergraduates. ROTC uses the power of the government to restrict student choices unnecessarily, and it therefore violates conservative principle #2.
All this suggests at least some elements of a policy position for Stanford: (a) that ROTC programs be replaced by Officer Candidate Schools in all of the branches; and (b) that money which is currently allocated to ROTC scholarships be reallocated to need-based, general-purpose grant aid for undergraduates.
One of the things I have always admired about some conservatives is their willingness to rethink what it means to be conservative. A discussion of ROTC’s overall justifiability is one good occasion for doing that, as is a discussion of the rest of the military budget.
Todd Davies ’84 is Associate Director of and Lecturer in the Symbolic Systems program. The views expressed in this article are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Symbolic Systems program.
Note: This is a shortened version of an article that is posted on the Web at http://www.stanford.edu/group/antiwar/conservatism-and-rotc.html. Please visit the full article for references and a more extended argument than space permits here.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
OCS may be the cheapest approach of the three roads to officership, but the author ignores something that ROTC does that neither OCS or the service academies really accomplish and that is provide opportunity for engagement and interaction between the military and other members of society. For me, this is not a “waste of taxpayers money.” If anything, we need to improve the engagement between our military and the rest of society. Relagating officer accessions to OCS only serves to further the divide between society and our nation’s military.
I also find it interesting that the author remains such a big proponent of personal freedoms, yet supports the accession program that offers the least amount of freedom to potential officers. OCS does not bring the trial period offered by ROTC or the service academies (be that 1-2 years) and it affords the least opportunity for the cadets to impact their branch/career path, with top performing cadets in ROTC and service academies pretty much receiving their top choices.
Just thought I would add that ROTC does not make stipulations on what major a cadet has, that assumption is completely false. Mr. Davies…do your homework and come back with an article that doesn’t contain false information.
To Smith: There are restrictions and/or approval requirements for majors required in ROTC programs, though they vary by branch and type of program. See the references in the longer version of the article, whose link is given below the text published on this website.
Here are some quotes from the different branches:
• “Army ROTC Cadets are allowed to major in nearly all academic areas” (subject to approval, it seems, http://www.goarmy.com/rotc/college-students/faq.html#Areall).
• “The Navy will activate scholarships upon the satisfactory development of a degree plan with the host NROTC unit and university and upon enrollment in the assigned academic major. NROTC midshipmen may lose their scholarship if they request a change from Tier 1 or Tier 2 major to a Tier 3 major. Similarly, Tier 3 LREC majors may lose their scholarship if they depart their course of study prior to graduation. Academic majors listed in each Tier may vary year to year dependent on the Navy’s requirements, however once accepted into an academic major and Tier, a students Tier status will not change. A student may request a modification from their original academic major. Changing from a Tier 1, Tier 2, or LREC major requires approval from a formal panel and will be based on the needs of the Navy.” (https://www.nrotc.navy.mil/scholarship_criteria.aspx).
• The Air Force allows students to list whatever major they want on a ROTC application, but they “strongly urge” applicants to “carefully consider” their choice of major, because the Air Force only offers scholarships to students majoring in subjects that “meet the needs of the Air Force”. (http://afrotc.com/help-center/faqs/#q_3).
To Jim:
I don’t follow your argument about OCS being more restrictive. First see the comparisons between commissioning sources in the references given in my longer article (http://www.stanford.edu/group/antiwar/conservatism-and-rotc.html). The situation is not as clear as you describe. Even if it were, if ROTC were replaced with OCS, then OCS grads would obviously not lose assignments to ROTC grads, because there wouldn’t be any. The key point is that ROTC tends to lock students into a path at an earlier point, making it harder to change their minds later. As the studies I cite show, this doesn’t result in any clear benefits to the military.
The argument that having ROTC on campus enhances interaction between the university and the military is the main one I hear from faculty who support ROTC. The main problem I have with this argument is that it is rather hand-wavy. What benefits are supposed to ensue from this interaction that could not happen if students who planned to join the military, and were getting military training off campus, could do so without incurring an obligation prior to graduation and without getting their training on campus? If we accept the on-campus engagement argument, we might as well accept that corporate training should happen on campus and should obligate students who undergo it, on the grounds that this would enhance engagement between corporate executives and other members of society. As in the case of ROTC, this would probably increase the amount of such interaction slightly overall, but to what purpose?
There is ample evidence that could be looked at, comparing ROTC and non-ROTC campuses over many decades. My longer article mentions several studies that do not find clear differences in outcomes between ROTC, OCS, and the academies in terms of the quality of the officers they produce. If the benefit is supposed to go the other way – from ROTC to the campuses they are on – where is the evidence for this? What I see at Stanford is mainly that the presence of ROTC students tends to shut down discussion about the military, because other students are reluctant to put ROTC students “on the spot”, so they simply avoid the discussion. I think this would happen less, and there would be more open interaction, if students who planned to join the military were not as locked into doing so as ROTC students are.
While the ROTC programs are more expensive than OCS the Academies in that same study are significantly more expensive. While accession from each yields nearly the same result. Currently in the US Navy the academy and NROTC produce roughly the same number of officers, while OCS picks up the slots not filled by either one. Given the current structure of the Navy, shouldn’t the Academies be looked at first for cuts instead of ROTC?
Also there are programs which allow commitment without the slightly more regimented life that ROTC requires. The Navy’s BDCP program is a scholarship with the stipulation of going to OCS. Also there is a reasoning behind the need to lock students in, it is the service’s money, it is in their advantage to see that it is used and not squandered, thus to oversee directly how a student is developing. A person is more likely to commission doing what they’d like to do in the military when it comes time for selection; this is because the service knows the midshipman/cadet better.
Though I’d agree, some reform is needed, the ROTC program constitutes a large percentage of overall officer accession and do increase the exposure the US military has on campuses, dare I use the term diversity! I’d first look into cutting the academies, which seem to be giant stalwarts using a ton of money.
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