You Don’t Need a College Degree to be a Military Officer
A candidate can get skills elsewhere.
The Wall Street Journal reports.
Military Officers Don’t Need College Degrees
Military recruiters and top brass like to repeat the refrain that the average member of the armed forces is better educated than the average American. It’s true. According to the Defense Department, nearly 94% of enlisted personnel have a high-school diploma, while only 60% of Americans do. About 83% of officers have a bachelor’s degree, in comparison with 30% of the general population.
These statistics, though, involve a bit of self-selection: Most officers have a bachelor’s degree because becoming an officer generally requires one, though this prerequisite appears increasingly anachronistic.
For one thing, the requirement of a college degree is simply a box for officer candidates to check. It doesn’t matter to the armed forces where you went to school, what you studied, or how well you did—short of a minimal GPA level of about 2.5 out of 4.0.
Scholarships provided by the Reserve Officer Training Corps and military academies such as West Point and Annapolis may have more stringent criteria, but in general anyone with a four-year degree who can pass the basic background checks and physical requirements of the military may apply for Officer Candidate School.
Comments
That’s an oversimplification. You can become an officer in the US military without a degree, but you’ll never be promoted past captain, which means you’ll be summarily discharged in about 10 years (probably less), no matter how great a performer you might be. That’s an awfully short career.
Many senior NCOs, particularly sergeants major in the Army and Marine Corps, and their equivalents in the Navy and Air Force, have bachelors degrees. Some also have masters degrees.