Interesting Op-Ed in the NYT. Not sure I agree with this authors view, I'm guess that in the hey day of Army and Col Red Blaik that they lowered the bar for football players, and that football players didn't have exactly the same experience as their peers. As far as afirmative action, while I am not in favor of quotas, but there are no doubt minorities who are qualified for admission to the Academies and deserve to be admitted even if there was a white kid who made 20 points higher on his SAT, or was #5 in his Class while the minority was #35 or stuff like that. I don't think admissions can be just a formula that takes into account GPA/Class Rank/Test Scores and ranks them mechanically in order of highest combined result of whatever math they do on the numbers. Whether or not the Academies would be better served by dropping big time athletics and competing on a lower level such as Div 111 I have no opinion. Navy and Air Force have been exciting teams to watch, Army hasn't been in a long time and I'd hate to see them go to Div111 but if they did it wouldn't ruin my view of college football. As far as all that stuff that they have to go through, essentially hazing, I don't know if they stopped that whether or not it would change the quality of officers they produced. I think most likely not, some things are benign like having to memorize all the minutia as fish that they do, but maybe they should be allowed to have lives more like normal college students. Military Academies
I have to admit to a general bias, or skepticism, when something comes from the New York Times. So much for the disclaimer. I also have mixed feelings about this article. The author claims that ROTC produces as good officers as the service academies, I'm not sure if that is true or not. I have a certain comfort level knowing our career soldiers, especially Generals, have been schooled in military. And there is little doubt in my mind that they get more of that from West Point than they might get from Vandy or the University of Florida. As far as the athletes, I can't speak that what he says is true either. I think very few football players who are going to use our service academies as stepping stones to the NFL or NBA. I agree the athletes should meet all the criteria that other students meet. More so than other colleges. I would probably agree that some re evaluation might be in order but am not ready to agree to shut them down. Interesting article though, even if it's from the NYT.
This the opinion of the NY Time, which like most newspapers today are holdovers from a past then the print media was the primary source of information dissemination in this country. Today they are dying, financially broken. Perhaps when the Times shuts its doors the academies can think about their future.