Disclaimer: I am currently a CGSC Student and active duty Air Force Major. My comments in no way indicate Air Force or Army veiwpoints.

When an officer applies to the ACS or EGSP programs, part of the application could include the officer’s desired research projects selected from a list of projects proposed by Army Research, Development and Engineering centers and PEOs. Acceptance into one of the programs would include direction to coordinate with an indentified point of contact for one of the requested research projects based on Army priorities. Throughout the graduate school program, the officer would coordinate with the point of contact to monitor progress on research that met the officer’s education requirements and Army objectives.

Some may say this proposal limits the academic freedom of officers attending graduate school. However, when I completed the ACS program I would have welcomed more specific guidance from the Army. I spent several months selecting a research topic that could have been better spent working towards my schooling requirements. I selected a research topic relating to Soldier performance, but since it was the creation of my graduate advisor and me, it did not necessarily align with work being completed at the Natick Soldier Research Development and Engineering Center (NSRDEC) and PEO Soldier. Therefore my work may have limited utility outside of earning my master’s degree, which I consider unfortunate given the huge sum of hours I put into it.

Also in response to limiting academic freedom, those critics should compare ACS and EGSP officers with their civilian counterparts. In my research program, all civilian students received funding for tuition and stipends from various grants. As part of that funding, they had to conduct research in support of the grant, which inevitably became closely aligned with their academic research requirements. Therefore, my civilian counterparts had significantly less freedom in selecting their research topics than I did. Since the Army is fully funding an officer’s graduate education, not to mention pay and benefits concurrently, I believe the Army would be fully in the right to direct the officer’s research.

By aligning Army officer graduate education with existing research objectives, the Army could gain significant value by committing only limited TDY funds above current budgets. These small increases could be more than offset by slight reductions in funding grants that currently fund civilian graduate students. While Army officers lose a small amount of academic freedom, I argue that the guidance could actually help the officer, and in any case is a small price for the officer to pay for a fully funded graduate degree.

The views expressed in this response are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense or the United States Government.

Major Kyle McFarland
U.S. Army
Intermediate Level Education Class 11-003 Staff Group 31D
Fort Gordon, GA