Attrition: Where Have All the Good Officers Gone
5th May 2016
ROTC has long depended on college grades as a major factor in determining which cadets would become officers. That seemed to work. But since 2001 it has become more obvious that the quality of ROTC officers was declining while those from the service academies (West Point and the like) and OCS (Officer Candidate School, mostly for enlisted troops) was not. On closer examination it was found that the problem was grade inflation in American colleges. The old standards for acceptable grades no longer applied thus using college grades to select qualified ROTC members to become competent officers had ceased to work. The service academies were much less affected by the grade inflation craze in part because they were run by the military and their students were basically studying technical subjects. The enlisted candidates for OCS were the result of the quality control program still enforced for new recruits since the 1970s.