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Naval War College

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Date: Apr 19 2016
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My civilian agency sent me to the NWC for senior training in preparation for top managerial and policy positions in the federal government. Studying military doctrine shoulder-to-shoulder with military counterparts is meant to prepare policymakers for jobs in national security. I looked forward to this opportunity.

Sadly, I was very, very disappointed. First, despite the administration's professions, the NWC definitely does NOT encourage independent thinking and debate. As a military institution, they issue orders which are to be obeyed. Period. So, their idea of academic training is to force feed pre-approved information like stuffing a fois gras goose and expect you to cough it up free of original thoughts or opinions. If you dared doing so, you risked being brought down by the instructors and simply low-graded or even flunked. I found the professors to be overwhelmingly mediocrities who graduated from mediocre institutions. The few civilian instructors with prestigious credentials seemed to sell themselves to the rigid ethos for a paycheck with benefits. Also, the NWC often repurposes recent graduates to teach courses, which I found incredible. The Civil War elective I took was "taught" by a stammering O-4 officer with no credentials in the Civil War or history.

NWC management pays great lip service to welcoming civilian counterparts to add to the educational experience of military officers through discussion and debate. Instead, they treat civilians like lepers, relegating them to third class citizens. As highest ranking officer, I was ipso facto made class president, which seemed to make the college president apoplectic. I was told that I had no duties, not even ceremonial, to be silent and do nothing. They also deny civilian students access to the PX, the gyms and other MRW facilities.

The NWC is also corrupt in giving out awards and titles. Civilians who outscored their military counterparts were nonetheless ignored. All honors went to uniformed members, even though they may have lower academic grades than civilian students. This practice was blatant and shameless.

I found the quality of education in non-military subjects (e.g., poli sci, history) to be laughably inferior to even that of a community college. Again, the approach is the fois gras goose one. Most of the military officers had B.A's obtained many years previously, mostly from non-prestigious colleges. The NWC and the other service branch-run grad schools are finishing schools for these officers to burnish their credentials for future advancement. But they deserve better.

The NWC and its counterpart military colleges should solely teach functional military courses. All other instruction, such as poli sci, econ, etc., should be done at civilian universities where instruction is much superior. An M.A. in international relations at GW, or SAIS is much more worthy than an M.A. from a war college, which can't hope to compete in this area. Not only would this save taxpayers' money, but would also more broadly expose military officers to independent thinking and debate as well as break them out of a hermetically sealed military bubble.

The missions of military colleges should be much more narrowly focused on military subjects. These schools are not equipped to compete with civilian schools in broader disciplines. All in all, I was terribly disappointed in my year at NWC. The educational experience was inferior and fraudulent and the attitude toward non-military members was condescending and dishonest.

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