If you all will allow me to jump back in here
beau said:
I think the problem with a lot of incoming freshman on Scholarship is that most of the time half of them quit before their sophmore year.
I think a comparison to the USNA regarding the ability of freshman to have their minds oriented toward being an officer might be useful. The USNA Midn is motivated by not only the prestige of attending a top college, is likely not at all motivated by the economic support he'll receive for four years, but is very likely motivated by the idea of being a naval officer. That Midn is typically coming out of high school. I think we would find that for every 100 that commence Plebe Summer, probably 90-92 will graduate four years later. Of the 8-10 that don't graduate, probably 6 in every 100 don't finish the freshman year. Even if these stats are a bit off, they represent pretty good indicators that those doing the selecting from the pool of applicants (even when distributed by state) are doing a very good job of finding suitable high school graduates who will complete the program.
If the NROTC Program is detecting an abnormal amount of freshman quitting and are making a gradual shift to awarding 3 year scholarships, then I would assert that those doing the selecting of high school freshman are just not doing as good a job as they could in screening applicants. The high school freshman applying for the NROTC Scholarship program is probably motivated toward the Navy and becoming an officer, doesn't realize that the economic support just is not what it could or should be, and is content that the university they have selected is a good one. As I said earlier, the Navy knows how to screen and select what they are looking for if they want to. If the NROTC Program is awarding 4 year scholarships and seeing too many freshman quit, then the selection process is not as good as it should be. Put another way, if across all the NROTC units the freshman drop-out rate is in double digit percentages, then the problem is the selection process. If not, then picking up a non-scholarship Midn merely fills the vacancy. Nothing wrong with that.
The USNA Midn can elect to withdraw before the commencement of their Junior Year. They likely will have all their costs converted to a student loan or face some (small) risk of the Secretary of the Navy placing them on active-duty as an E-something. So the option to quit before the commencement of the junior year is not a persuasive argument for the NROTC to start shifting to 3 year scholarships.
I have also wondered about the utility of something like an "IndocTraMid" as the first summer cruise in lieu of CORTRAMID. A 4-6 week IndocTraMid akin to Plebe Summer/Boot Camp held before the freshman academic year for NROTC Midn would not be out of the ordinary. But the scheduling, logistics, and costs of getting this off the ground would probably not attract any interest at CNET. However, expanding CORTRAMID to 8 weeks and boosting the time spent on what might be termed "Basic Midn Training" or "General Military Training", under the instruction of Marine NCOs, with half the time spent at Pendleton and Lejeune perhaps, might serve as an affordable surrogate for a separate Plebe-like summer. And if it did serve to weed out those not truly interested in becoming Navy/Marine Officers then the only loss to the Navy was two semesters of scholarship and the pittance given for the stipend and books.
I remain convinced that the NROTC Program needs to show its Midn that the Program is designed to fully focus the attention of the Midn on becoming a Navy/Marine Officer. The NROTC Program should be as all encompassing as it can be within the confines of the civilian academic calendar. The way the program seems to be constructed now, NROTC Midn are students who happen to be Midn. It should be the other way around. In other words, the Midn is a Midn first and a student also. To have a commissioning program that is much more encompassing, the economic supports have to allow the Midn to be a full-time Midn/student and not have to be distracted by a second job. That is why I think that it would not be at all unreasonable to grant to each Midn, either from day one or, not later than the commencement of the junior year, an amount that equals an average room and board cost at their respective university. Moreover, the stipend needs to get into the 20-30% of an Ensign's basepay. These are truly insignificant amounts but they would pay-off in the effectiveness of the program writ large by demonstrating to that high school graduate that the Navy is going to bring them "in" and develop them as officers if they make the grade. The economic supports will be sufficient to keep them focused on making the grade and demonstrate that they are "in" and not some sort of after thought and step child. As ludicrious as it sounds now, there was a time (decades ago) when NROTC literature actually implied that the stipend was designed so Midn would not have to seek outside sources of income. In hindsight, that was a "crock".
