<p>mombee, you bring up some good points taking the side of the naval academy, but I’d also like to bring up a few philosophical fallacies with your statements.
- regardless of the statistics you write about how many naval academy midshipmen were promoted to the rank of admiral or general, it is pretty much worthless since all the admirals now were commissioned in the mid to late 70s. like I said, times have changed, and when all those admirals were ensigns, the ROTC program was different and commissioned ensigns into the US Navy Reserve, so they did have an advantage.
- however, besides the program change, USNA midshipmen often stay in the navy and make it a career because they usually don’t have too many outside experiences. When it’s time for an officer that was commissioned through ROTC or OCS to sign a contract, they can much more easily compare and contrast the civilian lifestyle and civilian work opportunities. For example, if you realize all your college civilian buddies have a better lifestyle and get paid more at their civilian jobs, you’re more likely to get out of the navy to pursue a civilian career. Therefore, the very good officers out of OCS/ROTC with leadership characteristics that are destined for admiral or general might go out into the civilian workforce and become the CEO of a company instead. if you throw in statistics, remember correlation is not causation!! </p>
<p>i think that 20 years from now, the flag officers will be much more evenly divided between all the commissioning sources than there has been previously, but unless you have a time machine that can jump ahead and prove yourself right, let’s not assume anything through an appeal to tradition.</p>