Cancer in the service academies

Pretty sad. All those parked carriers, ships, carrier air wings, USAF squadrons and what is important to our high-end service schools in thin budget times?

Sports.

Which brings us to today’s subject: the military academies. Incredibly, even the Naval Academy, the Air Force Academy and West Point, charged with training the next generation of military leaders, systematically abandon their standards and admissions processes when a good athlete is within reach. Their highly questionable enrollment practices make one wonder whether the academies care as much about their mission these days as they do about winning football games.

There are two ways the military academies sneak in athletes who fail to meet their admissions standards. First, they all operate prep schools whose original purpose — preparing promising enlisted personnel for the rigors of an academy education — is long outdated.

Instead, the prep schools, which cost taxpayers around $25 million or so per year, are used for other purposes, including “redshirting” athletes — that is, stockpiling them for a year — when their high school records would prevent them from being admitted directly from high school. For instance, of the 300 students in the 2011 class of the Naval Academy Prep School, 110 are recruited athletes — typical for the other service academies. Oh, and they get paid a monthly stipend — which would seem to be a rather blatant violation of N.C.A.A. rules.

Also via Battleland.