I do not consider myself a conservative, at least not in the usual sense.

But I agree with some

principles that conservatives espouse. In the debate over whether Stanford should devote more
of its resources to ROTC, e.g. by establishing a full on-campus ROTC program with academic
credit and university-affiliated instructors, I oppose an expanded ROTC at Stanford for multiple
reasons. Many of those reasons reflect attitudes, from anti-militarism to a belief in transgender
equality, that are not usually high on the list of conservative values. But there are also good
conservative reasons to oppose ROTC, not just at Stanford but everywhere.

Appealing to aspects of conservatism with which I agree, I will try to make a case against ROTC
below, and then suggest how this could inform Stanford's policy response. In what follows, I do
not mean to endorse or justify current military objectives, but only to show that even if we
accept those objectives for purposes of further argument, ROTC cannot be justified. I do have a
lot of affection for the students I have known who have been in ROTC. While I recognize that
some or many of them might disagree with the analysis below, I write this as a sincere
expression of what I think would be in the interests of students generally, including theirs.

Let's start with a few principles that I associate with conservatism. These are principles with
which almost everyone (myself included) would agree, but among conservatives they tend to
receive special emphasis:

Taxpayer money should not be wasted.

Government should not control people's choices unnecessarily.

The Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) pays scholarships for undergraduate education in
exchange for training and for a commitment to pursue a commission as a military officer. In
addition to a four year degree, ROTC students get training from military instructors, generally
both on and off a college campus. Most of the costs of ROTC training are borne by the Federal
Government, in addition to the cost of providing student scholarships.

A 2004 study compared the costs to the U.S. Government to graduate and commission an officer
from ROTC versus two other possible commissioning sources: a Service Academy (such as the
the Naval Academy in Annapolis) and an Officer Candidate School/Officer Training School. The
Officer Training School (OTS) is the Navy's Officer Candidate School (OCS). OCSes exist for each
branch of the military, and make it possible for college degree holders to become commissioned
officers after 10-16 weeks of intensive training, which generally begins after graduation from
college. Stanford graduates are eligible to attend an OCS. Therefore a Stanford undergraduate
does not have to go through ROTC to become a commissioned officer in the military.
The results of the 2004 study are summarized below ("Comparative Analysis of ROTC, OCS, and
Service Academies as Commissioning Sources", Advanced Management Program, Navy Supply
Corps School, Tench Francis School of Business, November 19, 2004):

Service Academy

Naval Academy

ROTC (Scholarship)

OCS/OTS

Federal Government cost per graduate (FY97 dollars)

$340,000

$86,000

$32,000

The above data are similar to those in an earlier study of comparative costs for the three
commissioning sources across the Army, Navy, and Air Force ("Officer Commissioning Programs:
Costs and Officer Performance", Congressional Budget Office, June 1990). The 2004 study notes
that without scholarships, Naval ROTC students cost about half as much as scholarship students.
Thus, even without scholarships, ROTC students cost taxpayers more than the OCS/OTS. And
these costs are averaged across all colleges where ROTC operates. At an expensive university
such as Stanford, of course, the costs of ROTC are much higher.

Both of these studies show that OCSes are significantly cheaper for the government than either
the Service Academies or ROTC. Does spending more for ROTC produce significantly better
officers? This question has also been studied, and the answer is no. The CBO study did not find
major differences across the three commissioning sources in either performance or retention of
officers, and later studies also found small or mixed differences between ROTC and OCS trained
officers (see "Officer Commissioning Programs – More Oversight and Coordination Needed",
Government Accounting Office, November 1992, cited in the above mentioned 2004 study; and
Turgay Demirel, "A Statistical Analysis of Officer Retention in the U.S. Military", Naval
Postgraduate School, 2002).

From these data, it appears that the military would spend less money training officers, with no
sizable loss in officer quality or retention, if it trained all of them in Officer Candidate Schools, at
least after the initial increase in capacity for these schools. Anticipating a reduction in the need
for officers following the Cold War, the 1990 CBO study concluded that "nothing in the results
CBO was able to quantify suggests that any commissioning program should be protected as
overall officer strength is reduced." This can be read as saying that the more expensive programs
(the academies and ROTC) could be replaced with the less expensive OCSes.

Since ROTC training costs more than OCSes even without a scholarship, the government could
also pay for the same number of general purpose undergraduate scholarships as ROTC currently
provides (including those for Stanford students), on top of OCS training for all of those currently
trained in ROTC (and the academies, for that matter), and it would still save money. And these
scholarships could all be need-based, unlike ROTC scholarships, giving more students the
opportunity to attend college.

Thus a good case can be made that ROTC is wasting taxpayer money, violating conservative
principle #1 above. A letter reportedly from a young Army officer, published by the military
reform website G2mil, illustrates that some inside the military may be having similar thoughts
(although the official studies I have cited are much more cautious about their recommendations,
probably for political reasons). The letter reads [bracketed text added]: "Now that I am in OBC
[Officer Basic Course] with a number of OCS-commissioned LTs [lieutenants], I wonder why the
services even have ROTC or the academies any more. Every one of the OCS grads that I met so
far is very mature and highly competent in comparison to the ROTC or USMA [United States
Military Academy] grads. The average OCS grad is a few years older (25-30 for OCS as opposed to
22-24 for ROTC/USMA) and most have extensive prior military service (as opposed to very little
prior service for ROTC/USMA grads)." The letter continues: "I think that the military should just
get rid of ROTC (and dare I say - the academies too) and just go straight OCS. They can expand
the OCS program and a ton of money will be saved when ROTC and the academies are
disbanded. The services should hash out if candidates should have prior enlisted service." The
letter writer ends by saying: "Please do not disclose my name."

Another recent article showing support within military circles for the idea that ROTC can be
replaced with OCSes is "Don't Expand ROTC. Replace It", published in the Washington Post on
January 28, 2011. The authors are former Secretary of the Navy John Lehman and former chief
of Air Force History Richard H. Kohn, both of whom served on the Independent Review Panel for
the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review. Lehman and Kohn advocate eliminating on-campus ROTC
training, but their plan would retain four-year scholarships designed to lure young people into
the military after graduation. They do not say so explicitly, but they imply that these scholarships
would be contingent on military service. This is where I differ with their proposal.

A ROTC scholarship comes with many strings attached for the student who has one. Scholarships
generally require approval of a student's major before money is awarded (with changes also
requiring approval), and may restrict the recipient to a narrower range of majors than would
otherwise be available to them. Students are often restricted in their summer activities as well.
After one or two years (depending on the branch), ROTC scholars must commit to between four
and eight years in the military following graduation, thus eliminating or significantly delaying the
freedom to pursue other career options (see Demirel, 2002, cited above).

The existence of Officer Candidate Schools shows that restricting the freedom of undergraduates
in this way is unnecessary. Students c Lould wait until after they graduate, go to an OCS, and
receive a commission. Thus, their decisions about both their majors and their careers could be
made later, at the same time as their fellow students, and without limiting other options.
Competition to get into an OCS appears to have increased recently, so that ROTC may currently
provide a surer path to a commission, but this is a function of priorities among commissioning
sources within the military and is not immutable from a policy standpoint.

Stanford undergraduates are generally guaranteed enough financial aid, based on need, to
complete a four year degree. They should not need ROTC, either to attend Stanford or to
become military officers after they graduate. Why, then, would Stanford students give up this
freedom? Of course, some families do not feel they can pay what the Stanford Financial Aid
office thinks they can afford for an undergraduate education, and merit-based scholarships are
one alternative. But beyond that, in my experience, ROTC students are often led into ROTC by
family members or by the prevailing culture in the places where they grew up, before they arrive
at Stanford. This means that the military is taking advantage of the biasing effects of a student's
upbringing in trying to force an earlier commitment to a major and to military life than is
necessary, particularly in the case of Stanford students who have other options.

Recalling my earlier suggestion that ROTC scholarship money provided by the government be
spent on need-based, general scholarships instead, we can compare ROTC as it presently exists
with an alternative in which less government money is spent, providing the same number of
scholarships and the same number of opportunities to become a military officer, without
requiring premature commitments to majors and a career by undergraduates. ROTC uses the
power of the government to restrict student choices unnecessarily, and it therefore violates
conservative principle #2.

At this point, we might ask why ROTC continues if it is inefficient and unnecessarily restrictive. I
think the answer, as with so much else about the U.S. Military, is that ROTC is a big program with
a lot of historical momentum, and that many people enjoy the perks it affords to them. Colleges
and universities that receive scholarship funds are understandably attached to this revenue
source. ROTC creates military faculty positions at colleges and universities, with extra positions
required to staff separate programs on hundreds of campuses, however inefficient that is. So
ROTC is an interest group within the huge and powerful interest group of the military industrial
complex. Again, this should trouble any conservative who does not like the idea of wasteful
spending of taxpayer dollars. Some in the military would no doubt enjoy being on a campus such
as Stanford. That does not mean that a ROTC program should be housed here.

The analysis above suggests at least some elements of a policy position for Stanford. I think the
university should declare that it favors two courses of action by the U.S. Government in relation
to ROTC: (a) that ROTC programs be replaced by Officer Candidate Schools in all of the branches;
and (b) that money which is currently allocated to ROTC scholarships be reallocated to need-
based, general purpose grant aid for undergraduates. I would argue for a stronger university
stance against militarism as well, but I will make that case at another time.

The case I have made here does not address how Stanford should approach ROTC on our own
campus before, or in the absence of, the Federal changes for which I have argued. Again, I will
have more to say about that in the future. But if people across a wide political spectrum can
agree that ROTC is generally wasteful and unnecessarily restrictive, then we will have made
progress.

Discerning readers may notice that the two principles I began with could be used to make
"conservative" cases for many other positions not usually associated with contemporary
conservatism, with enough empirical backing. Indeed, there are self-proclaimed conservatives
(e.g. Andrew Bacevich) who harken back to George Washington's warnings about "standing
armies" and who oppose militarism, and/or who favor drug legalization, etc. - positions normally
associated with liberals or the left. Although I do not regard myself as a conservative, the fluid
nature of philosophical conservatism across times and places, combined with its broad
psychological appeal, give the conservative tradition ongoing importance in our political
discourse. One of the things I have always admired about some conservatives is their willingness
to rethink what it means to be conservative. A discussion of ROTC's overall justifiability is one
good occasion for doing that, as is a discussion of the rest of the military budget.