I remember racing at the boat school a lot since they played host to a lot of the east coast races. I recall visiting the library and being amazed that on every table in that building there was a pretty high end TI calculator. They weren’t chained to the table. They were for student use. This was pre-PC days and TI calculators cost a fortune. We still used slide rules!

We made the mistake my first time out with the team of accepting Navy’s offer of racks in the field house. Never did that again. Although we represented a big school the sailing team was not officially sanctioned by the University we sailed for although we did have Mid Atlantic Region accreditation. We tended to sail on the cheap and have a hell of a lot of fun. We were not as bad as the Terps since a number of us were ROTC and the rest were All American (OK, just the girls dammit).

In my experience the boat school guys had access to top notch instructors and equipment. It’s a pity they couldn’t train their mids out of over vanging a laser and t’was hardly sporting to pull the drain plug on lasers that were hot swapped on a raft in the river between races. Only a complete bastard would do something like that. As with the Field House, it only took one lesson.

I had a full ride to MIT and another to Shipwreck. I took classes at two respectable (although not top tier) colleges while I was in high school. USNA afforded me many opportunities to meet and work with the best and brightest of my peers from MIT, CalTech, Princeton, and a handful of others. I never felt that they had received a better education than I and (since graduating) I have never regretted my choice for a second.

To chastise USNA for it’s academic preparation is pure buffoonery. To boot, we got a lot of good leadership and general life skills edumacation that is not part of the standard package most places.

Guys, I really like the modern analogies to “an army marches on its stomach.” Whether it’s considered a big or little thing doesn’t matter; but I say the same thing when I’m doing my docent thing on the USS Midway museum here in San Diego. I take tours down below and when we hit the laundry spaces I say the sailors doing this job are every bit as important as the pilots above. If you don’t have clean, sanitary, sharp looking, well fitting uniforms everything suffers – morale, mission, esprit de corps, all the big stuff….that real leaders know about.

Going now to the boat for a watch. C-ya.

I can think of two reasons for a Masters degree: one Navy one non Navy.

The non Navy reason is that Navy careers come to an end-and it would seem the civilian market places a value on certain post graduate degrees.

The Navy reason is that it is pretty much a requirement for promotion these days. Certainly in the joint world their USAF and Army compatriots will have one.

Among machinists and welders there’s a long-standing contempt for engineers, those who know everything but how to make what they draw on paper.

Likewise, among the fleet there’s a long-standing knowledge that officers are there to lead and take responsibility, chiefs and enlisted get the work done and know more about the details than the guy giving the orders.

Which isn’t a bad thing, I submit. I doubt the CEO of Intel knows anything about making CPU’s in a clean room. He has bigger things to occupy his time, he hires talent to oversee that effort.

But with that said, few ever rise to flag rank, and a Ph.D in (sorry Lex, going to use you as the example here) political science isn’t likely to give a pilot an edge over his enemy in air combat, nor will a Ph.D in mechanical engineering help a division officer manage his crew.

At some point one has to look at the advanced degree for what is it, specialization and thus isolation when the mission is different from the education choice.

A general degree, the standard BS or BA, is a good start to show one can learn. As with most undergrads taking on the work-a-day world, everything after that is O.J.T.

And we’ve traditions, and CPO’s, to handle that part of it.

– Max