Military Review English Edition November-December 2013 | Page 14

posited in an article in the Armed Forces Journal
that the Army did not value intellectual creativity in its senior leaders. In his article, he broadly
attacked the officer professional development path
as a “system that . . . does little to reward creativity
and moral courage” in its senior leaders.4
While possibly overstating the problem, Yingling’s assertion is worth further investigation. A
review of the resumes of all serving active duty
general officers, conducted in 2007 (the same year
that Yingling published his article), showed that
roughly 70 percent of the general officers held
advanced degrees from civilian institutions, and
almost half of those officers held master’s degrees
from both civilian and military institutions (such
as the National War College, Army War College,
SAMS, etc.).5 On its face, this would seem to refute
Yingling’s assertion.
However, upon closer inspection there may be
something to what Yingling says. It is important to
note that many of the general officers who earned
advanced degrees did so on their own time and
not as the result of a focused effort by the Army to
develop their intellectual capacity. Many of them
earned their degrees at night or during weekends
while performing some other duty—such as attending the Command and General Staff College.
Also notable, despite the proliferation of master’s
degrees, only six of the 300 active-serving general
officers possessed degrees at the doctoral level.
Four of the six officers earned their doctorate in
conjunction with a tour of duty as an instructor at
the United States Military Academy (USMA).
This lack of focused education has more to do
with career timelines and requirements than with a
lack of institutional interest in intellectual development. Given the requirements of Goldwater-Nichols and joint assignments, key developmental jobs,
positions in the institutional Army, and promotion
timelines tied to a 30-year career, there is little
room for advanced civil schooling. Many of the
opportunities, such as advanced degrees for foreign
area officers or other functional area specialties,
require an officer to forgo the opportunities for
advancement in his or her operational branch. For
officers in operational tracks, opportunities exist for
advanced degrees, but they have traditionally been
associated with a utilization tour as an instructor
at USMA or in another institutional assignment.
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These utilization tours can continue up to three
years, potentially sacrificing important operational
experience that officers require for successful battalion command—a key step to future service as
a senior leader. In many cases, those who pursue
more traditional assignments focused on developing operational expertise have an advantage over
their peers who did not. Pursuing a doctoral-level
degree with the requisite time to develop and write
a doctoral dissertation is usually detrimental to an
officer’s career in the operational Army. In the case
of the six general officers who earned Ph.D.s noted
above, all of them wrote their dissertations on their
own time—a remarkable achievement given the
time required to complete a doctoral dissertation
satisfactorily.6

In Search of a Solution

In December 2011, in Gen. Odierno’s first trip
to Fort Leavenworth as the Army’s 37th chief of
staff, he asked Lt. Gen. David Perkins, commanding
general of the Combined Arms Center, to develop
a concept that would satisfy a critical capability
gap—one that Odierno had witnessed during several years of leading multinational forces in Iraq.
Odierno explained that while he had many talented
officers and advisors throughout his tours, they
generally lacked the academ ???????????????????)?????????????????????????????????????????)????????????????????????????????????????)????????????????U?????M?????????????????)???????!????????????????????????????????)?????????????????????????????????????????)????????????????????????????????????????????)???????????????????????????????????????????)???????????()Q??????????M??????)A????????????A??????A????()%?????????????????????????????M5L????????????????????M???????A????????????A?????)A??????M@???Q?????????????????????????)???????????????????????????????????????)???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????)???????????????????????????????????????)???????????]????????????????????????????????)??????????????????????????????????)????????????????????????????????????)9?????????????????(+???5%1%QId?IY%\((0