revengeofareasonablemind

Dumbing Down the Air Force September 1, 2014

The Air Force Chief of Staff and the new in-the-job-less-than-a-year Secretary of the Air Force announced recently that advanced academic degrees would not be considered for promotion to ranks below full colonel (O-6).  Having spent twenty-three years in the Air Force, having gotten a masters degree because it was a discriminator in promotability during my career, and having watched the ebb and flow of the importance promotion boards put on the advanced degrees, I am wondering what in the world is the leadership thinking.  This dumbing down of the air force officer corps is more than enough careless thinking for revenge of a reasonable mind.

The explanation for the new advanced degree policy was the following: “Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James and Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh said the changes were made to clarify expectations, and correct a long-standing perception that most officers must complete an advanced degree to be promoted.”  Two things about this statement:  (1) no clarification of expectations is necessary, there is no misperception; and (2) having an advanced degree does help most officers get promoted.

But, wait a minute what is wrong with an expectation that to get promoted within the Air Force officer ranks you need to pursue an advanced degree?  If officers were in the civilian community working for an aerospace or defense firm, having an advanced degree would be a discriminator not just for promotion, but to get hired in the first place.  Should anything less be expected form those who we entrust with defending the nation.  Additionally, what I found when I got my advanced degree as a captain was that it was helpful in developing structured and critical thinking outside my Air Force job description – pilot.  Was juggling studies, my flying schedule and my family obligations?  Sure it was.  But, am I glad I did it?  You bet.  Universities have made a lucrative market in degree programs that accommodate to professionals in all occupations who are getting degrees while holding down there jobs.

During my time in the Defense Department the most common criticism regarding the officers who were entrusted with decision making was that there was dearth of critical thinking involved.  Disciplined, critical thinking contributes to logical decision-making and is something that should be nurtured as officers mature and learn new jobs and progress in positions of increasing responsibility.  The broadening of a person’s knowledge-base provides more knowledge data points to consider when making decisions.  For the Air Force as an institution, encouraging advanced academic degrees in making an investment in the intellectual prowess and knowledge-base of its supervisory, management and leadership see corn.  Moving back into an academic environment when officers are growing up in their jobs will be far more beneficial than when they are Lt Cols and have formed unalterable points of view on whatever their jobs are.

Getting an advanced academic degree does represent a very useful discriminator for identifying those who are willing to spend the time, but more important capable of prioritizing their Air Force job, family life and other demands on their time.  The person that can do that and excel at there Air Force job as well is the person I want in leadership positions in the Air Force.  It’s hard enough to separate the true high-performer from the rest, since performance reports (except for the malcontents and true incompetents) generally are not very helpful.  So, what do you use for the metric. The job description and level of responsibility as a discriminator comes with a caution.  Jobs and positions very quickly become identified as non-promotable, when incumbents routinely are passed over.  Think you’re going to get competent volunteers for those jobs.  I think not.  Furthermore, the new Air Force policy is poorly thought through from a purely timing and behavioral perspective.

Lieutenant Colonels in the Air Force have approximately two productive years in grade before being considered the first time for O-6.  What do you think most Lt Cols will do?  Will they plan ahead and get the masters degree while a captain or major in anticipation of the colonel’s promotion board?  Of course not.  When selected for Lt Col, every selectee will all at the same time enroll in masters programs.   Just when Lt Col are involved in the most important command assignments or higher headquarters staff leadership positions, they will be scrambling to get masters degrees.

However, let’s look at this advanced degree policy from a very practical, budget advocacy perspective.  When serving as the DoD deputy comptroller, I would go over to the Congress to advocate for military personnel funding increases.  One of the arrows in my quiver was to make comparisons between the responsibilities of the officer corps and their civilian counterparts.  Particularly effective in arguing the case was to say, “and we have the most educated personnel, deserving of an increase in pay.”  I would compare education statistics between the private sector and the military officer corps, particularly.   The military always came out more educated based on the number of advanced degrees.  With the Air Force policy anyone advocating for increased military personnel funding based on a highly educated officer corps would be left with say, “The Defense Department has a higher educated officer officer corps than their private sector counterparts, except for the Air Force which has gone in a different direction.”

This policy is not new.  In the early 2000s, promotion board were directed to disregard advanced degrees when making promotion selections.  But, what were they to use to discriminate those who were promotable.  They used narrative description of performance and level of job responsibility.  (All to often budding novelists and great fiction writers had the highest promotion rate for those they supervised)  That proved to be unsatisfactory when a lot of people with masters degrees got passed over to Lt Col.    Consequently, attaining an advance degree as a captain or major as a discriminator for promotion was considered to be a useful discriminator and reinstated.

One can speculate that recent funding reductions might prompt such a  policy, the amount of money designated for tuition assistance generally and advanced degrees specifically, is very small by comparison to procurement programs and operations and maintenance.  The request for FY2015 for all of Professional Development Education was only $219 million.  But, whether for budgetary or other reasons that only the top leadership of the Air Forces knows for sure, one thing is likely.  This decision will be reversed sometime in near future.  So, all you captains and majors, get an advanced degree.  If you intend to pursue and Air Force career, I guarantee at some point it will come in handy.  It might even improve your promotion chances.