Idea: 2 Years of College for all CAP Officers

[lordmonar]

Easy enough... Education is one small factor among a big written package that has to EARN you an interview, that interview EARNS your way in front of a selection board, where you COMPETE for a limited number of slots. Say one in four gets slected, hopefully we can keep it under 15% failure rate, but it may be high depending on the strength of our selection process.

A PhD in non-profit mgmt, MBA, & BS in SaR mgmt, being a retired PJ, 40 years of corporate experience including being CEO of a fortune 500 company, NONE of this will get you a seat in officer training. These are merely a few of MANY objective & subjective factors wieghed in measuring the whole person to determine if they are a good candidate. IF they are selected & stick it out through the difficult training, then they will be an entry level officer being molded by mentors & good NCOs as they move from menial staff kinds of jobs in support of local units & developed from there to national commander. NCOs run local units & are career field operators. Officers are at base on staff. Does this make sense?

No....I still don't see any value added to our program.  The level of quality of officers is just not needed for our program.  You are still under the misconception that "if you build it they will come".  While this is true to a point....no matter how qualified our officer corps is there is only so far we will be able to take on more USAF missions.

It would be like hiring a Phd to do english 101...sure he is very qualified to do the job...he will never be asked to do Phd work.

In the mean time a lot of great undergrads and grad students go elsewhere because they can't get into the door.

Let's focus on what we do.  If you fly...do you need 60+ hours of college?  No.  If you run a typical squadron do you need 60+ hours of college?  No.

So you want to build an OTS that is hard to get into, hard to pass and makes you hard core nail eating 2d Lt.  Who is going to expend that type of effort for a hobby?

And that is the key here.......CAP is a hobby.  That does not mean we are not professional nor are should we not be held to professional standards....it is still a hobby.

[JohnKachenmeister]

Guys:

You all are starting to sound like lawyers looking for a loophole.

"What about the natual-born genius who started a Fortune 500 company whaile still in high school in his parents' basement, discovered a vaccine for AIDS in high school chemistry class, and sailed around he world solo by his 21st birthday?  You mean HE can't be a 2nd Lt. in CAP because he didn't go to college?  I've got a dozen guys like that in my unit!"

College may not be the final test or measure of a man, but it is an objective standard by which we measure people in society.  College achievement is documentary proof of at least reasonable literacy, the ability to plan and organize work, meet deadlines, and manage various demands from multiple sources.  

"All I did was party and get drunk at keg parties in college."

Then if that's all you remember doing, and you still earned a degree, then we can add "Creative time management" to the list of qualities that a degree assures.

We are talking about IMPROVING the CAP officer corps.  This means a major improvement, not a "Tweak" to the Profesional Development system.

And Dennis:  Pop me an e-mail by PM with a good e-mail address for you.  I will send you the draft of the paper that I've written so far.

[Major Carrales]

I graduated from a University... I was one of the few actually studying in the library.  I lived the life of a monk (save for my musical performances)

It was a truly sad period of my life that are among the loneliest chapters of my life... EXCEPT for CAP.

I joined CAP when I was in my last years at the University.  The idea of it blew me away.  I could serve my nation and community in a unique way.

I guess the debate on College Degrees doesn't effect me either way...but I can see both side of the issue.  CAP was there for me before I was "somebody," but it was my graduation that made me a teacher.  Now that I teach and have earned a place in CAP I find life would be less interesting without it.

I will say this, however, CAP is a volunteer service driven program.  Those that do best do so because they want to be there.  Because they enjoy the service of it...when this ends so does their "active status."  Muddy the waters and most people will head for shore, leaving the rest to wallow and drown in overburdened tides of ineffectiveness.

[lordmonar]

We are talking about IMPROVING the CAP officer corps.  This means a major improvement, not a "Tweak" to the Profesional Development system.

If you want to improve the CAP officer corps....fix the problem.  There is nothing wrong with our raw material, it is the training, mentorship and accountability that is lacking.

Sure we get a few bad apples...but if we improve our training, mentorship and accountability we will either train them to standards or freeze them in place at the appropriate level of training.

Gate keepers like this are stupid.....I'll say it again...it is stupid.  It does not solve the problems at hand and it will lock out a large number of our members from ever becoming part of the solution....AND that WILL hurt us in the long run.

Make the training harder....by all means....make the training more intesive....make meeting the standards of the training necessary for completion....gods I wish.  But arbitrary outside of the box gate keepers are not the way to go.

You may be able to find you 6000 officers...but you will loose about 90% of all the rest.  The non college CAP members will be treated as second class citizens (see the Flight Officers as an example).  They will never be able to hold command or high policy office because they have not the time or money to go back and get some useless degree (and it is useless to them or they would have already gotten one).

Degrees for USAF officers make some sense because you are dealing with 21-22 year old kids.  There are not many ways that you can assess how successful they will be in the USAF.  So a degree shows a certain level of critical thinking and perseverance.  But CAP is not the USAF (I know you want to make it that...but we digress).

You envision some great new CAP with a professional officer corps and hoards of worker bees NCO/Enlisted.  But what you don't realize is that....unlike the USAF where there is plenty of work for everyone no matter what rank they hold.....what will CAP AB's be doing?  You are going to ask some 55 year old CFI, business man that he has got be an AB and that because he did not have the forethought to go to college...that he can never hope to help lead his squadron.

This guy is going to walk and go form a BSA explorer post and put us out of a job!

[JohnKachenmeister]

Lord M:

You talk about "Gatekeeper" requirements as somehow being bad, but doesn't your alternative plan simply move the gate farther down the road?

Instead of screening officers at the beginning, when they enter the system, you would have the "Bad apples" as you call them enter a toughened officer development program, and then fail to meet the requirements.

Why not apply some standard predictors of success in completing training requirements at the beginning, and move the well-intentioned but poorly prepared individuals into jobs that are a better fit for them?  If a person has completed either 2 years of college, OR a substantial amount of vocational training, he has already demonstrated the ability to exist somewhere between survival and excellence in a training environment.

I would suggest to you that all of the exceptional examples you point out would meet the educational threshhold we propose for accession of CAP officers.  The existence of a high school grad with no training or education beyond high school with the drive, motivation, ability, and financial resources to become a CAP officer would be a rarer bird than the kiwi.

[Dragoon]

Question - what would be expected from a CAP Lt Col that would not be expected from a CAP 1st Lt?

So far, all this discussin has come down to a single discriminator - NCOs won't command units, but officers will.

Okay, that means we only need two grades in CAP - SSgt and 2d Lt!  Because all we're designating is "folks who can (but don't have to) command units" and folks who can't command units."

In the real military, every job has a rank tied to it.  You don't get to hold a job many levels above your pay grade, nor many levels below.

Do you propose to make CAP work that way?

What will this CAP Lt Col have to do in his CAP job that the 2d Lt (or SSgt) won't?

[JohnKachenmeister]

Define "Unit."

I could have a 2LT command a flight or a squadron, but do you want a guy with one or two years in the organization running a group?  Or your wing?

[ZigZag911]

Define "Unit."

I could have a 2LT command a flight or a squadron, but do you want a guy with one or two years in the organization running a group?  Or your wing?

Funny you should mention that, we have all sorts of folks with but a few (3 or 4) years in CAP running wings...and no, these are NOT former field grade military officers

[lordmonar]

Lord M:

You talk about "Gatekeeper" requirements as somehow being bad, but doesn't your alternative plan simply move the gate farther down the road?

Sure it does...but the gatekeeper standard is based solely on demonstrated proficiency and is not base on hose of economic/social factors that drive whether a person goes to college or not.

Instead of screening officers at the beginning, when they enter the system, you would have the "Bad apples" as you call them enter a toughened officer development program, and then fail to meet the requirements.

Yep....that is called an objective skills based standard.

Why not apply some standard predictors of success in completing training requirements at the beginning, and move the well-intentioned but poorly prepared individuals into jobs that are a better fit for them?  If a person has completed either 2 years of college, OR a substantial amount of vocational training, he has already demonstrated the ability to exist somewhere between survival and excellence in a training environment.

Because if we are talking about comparing two 22 year olds you would be correct....but we are not talking about 22 year olds.  We are talking about people between the ages of 18 and 75!  Your predictor is useless in that vast of a demographic.  If you have any eduction background you would know that adult education is vastly different than secondary and undergraduate education.  The motivations, work ethic and abilities are very different.  You assume that just because someone did not go to college he cannot do as well as someone who has...that may be true...if everthing else is equal...but what we should be focusing on is the standards that we wish these people to operate at.  Everyone should be given the opprotunity to meet these standards. 

I would suggest to you that all of the exceptional examples you point out would meet the educational threshhold we propose for accession of CAP officers.  The existence of a high school grad with no training or education beyond high school with the drive, motivation, ability, and financial resources to become a CAP officer would be a rarer bird than the kiwi.

Unless you have some way of translating life experience into college credit....I don't think they do.

[JohnKachenmeister]

Lord M:

You seem to be focusing on the word "College."  The proposed requirement would include college, pilot training, and vocational training.  The 19 - 21 year old SHOULD demonstrate the capability of performing in a training environment past high school, for the very reason you mention.

The 21 through 70 year old, assuming he has done something with his life other than play rock music in his parents' basement, will have attended an apprenticeship program, job-related training classes, vocational school, or some similar program, even if he has not gone to a college or university.

My son is a good example.  He started out in college, took a few semesters, then (like a dummy) got married.  He had a few retail management jobs, which entailed classes that he had to attend, and then he got a job as a flight attenant.  He had a month full-time in Florida in training, and has had mandatory in-service training sessions several times each year.

If he were to apply for CAP officer rank, I'm sure the total of his training and schooling would put him over the proposed educational threshhold.

My question is, if we have a 28 or 29 year old applying who finished high school, and has never sat in any kind of a classroom since, don't we already know that he will have problems in a toughened PD program?  And if such a person is out there, it it likely that he has the financial resources to be a CAP officer anyway?  Isn't it likely that his job will be so low-paying that the cost of dues and uniforms would come from the family's food budget?  The tax deductability of CAP expenses is meaningless when your income is so low that you don't pay taxes anyway!

[lordmonar]

My question is, if we have a 28 or 29 year old applying who finished high school, and has never sat in any kind of a classroom since, don't we already know that he will have problems in a toughened PD program?

No we don't.  That is my point.  And if he does fail...at least he failed for his lack of ability and not some more or less arbitrary lack of "preparation".

And if such a person is out there, it it likely that he has the financial resources to be a CAP officer anyway? 

Now are you suggesting that we screen applicants to insure they can afford CAP?  Anyone who shows up at my door should be given the opprotunity to compete for leadership positions no matter what their history (barring criminal activity).

You are penalising people for decisions they made and/or had no control over when they were 18 years of age.

Listen....you will never be able to convince me that there is a need to have a college (or college credit) for joining.  Unless you can come up with a fair, comprehensive and objective method of determining what sort of life experinces, apprentership programs, training programs and what not count toward your college equivancy.

Let me see that...and maybe we may be onto something.

[Major Carrales]

In theory, a person in CAP wants to be in CAP and would thus be motivated to take the PD.  A person in college is the same motivation, if they can afford to go.  Those that drop out of college for academic sloth, and not financial reason, may not have really wanted to go in the first place or were not paying for it.

Those that fail due to poor intellectual capailities are a differnet story.

[aveighter]

Hobby?  The auxiliary of the Unites States Air Force is just a hobby?

Gentlemen, take your proposals and ideas to other venues.  This is the hobbyist forum.  No serious standards required or desired.

I hope 1st AF isn't looking. 

[CAP428]

Hobby?  The auxiliary of the Unites States Air Force is just a hobby?

Not just a hobby, but a hobby still the same.  CAP is not anyone's job here.  It is done in your freetime on your own free will.  Something extra you do.  Thus, it is a "hobby."

The only reason we don't like calling it that is that it makes it sound like it is something that doesn't really matter, and we all like to think what we are doing here does matter, thus my distinction between just a hobby and "hobby."

[MIKE]

CAP is not anyone's job here.  It is done in your freetime on your own free will.

Really? 

[lordmonar]

Hobby?  The auxiliary of the Unites States Air Force is just a hobby?

Gentlemen, take your proposals and ideas to other venues.  This is the hobbyist forum.  No serious standards required or desired.

I hope 1st AF isn't looking. 

aveighter...do you get paid to be a member of the CAP?  Then it is a hobby.  Does that mean we don't have to have serious standards?  Heck no...and if you go back and read my whole post you will see I said just that. 

But that still does not negate the fact that it is a part time hobby.  People do it because they like to do it.  It is not a job nor is it a career.

You can still be a professional in all that you do...but don't make it out to be anything that it is not.

[JohnKachenmeister]

I think I ought to sell the last few posts to Garmin.  If general aviation pilots knew that CAP officers had no more committment to their duties than they do to their golf game, sales of GPS units, and survival kits, would skyrocket.

[lordmonar]

Okay...what do you call something that you do in your spare time and don't get paid for it?

Hobby.

That is 90% of the problem I have with many of you all's ideas about reforming CAP.  It is a hobby.  It is an important hobby where we help people, train cadets and educate the public about the benefits of air power.

But is is still a hobby.

If you don't like the word hobby...how about club?

I can hear the groans of angst right now!

[DNall]

Question - what would be expected from a CAP Lt Col that would not be expected from a CAP 1st Lt?

So far, all this discussin has come down to a single discriminator - NCOs won't command units, but officers will.

Okay, that means we only need two grades in CAP - SSgt and 2d Lt!  Because all we're designating is "folks who can (but don't have to) command units" and folks who can't command units."

In the real military, every job has a rank tied to it.  You don't get to hold a job many levels above your pay grade, nor many levels below.

Do you propose to make CAP work that way?

What will this CAP Lt Col have to do in his CAP job that the 2d Lt (or SSgt) won't?

Actually, NCOs very much can & will command local units, as will senior 1Lt-junior Capts, but not SrA, 2Lts, or Majors. That's the operational leadership point, SSgt-TSgt & 1Lt-Capt. And, yes to the greatest extent possible grades & positions will be tied together. We can't do it as effectively as the military because we can move people around, but to the greatest extent possible we'll stick to the system. If there are exceptions they'll be as minor as we can make them & watched closely.

SSgt under this system equates to level 4 in the current PD program & 10 years TIS, takes Gill Rob Wilson & 3 more years to make TSgt. 1Lt means you've been in CAP 3-5 years, have a couple years college, been selected 3 times by a review board including an AF field grade officer, and graduated Lvl1/BMT (3-6mos), OTS (12mos), OBC focused on your broad career field (in-res), and have a tech rating in your primary job, plus you've served 1.5-3.5 years on what amounts to Group Staff. Those, on both the officer & enlisted side, are the minimum standards for what amounts to a deputy commander or ES officer type slot.

Most officers won't be assigned to local units & NCOs will have priority in those slots. NCO also lead the way on ES & run the local cadet program. Officers get exposed to ES by earning a rating & doing it for a couple years, but after that will rarely be allowed in the field except to stay current & familiar. Instead they will be training long & hard for the ICS staff positions back at base, & relying on the expert field operators (enlisted) to actually accomplish the mission. On the day-to-day stuff, they'll be on a mini-group level staff doing all the positions in 20-1 that you can't fill & lifting all the staff load up off your unit it can laser focus on just the missions while doing only the most necessary admin/personnel/testing functions locally.

Field grade officer, like Iowa, get pulled up to Gp/Wing staff slots, or reserve billets with those units or the Wg reserve (holding) unit. NCOs & junior officers CAN work in positions above the levels I just stated, but it would be commensurate with their grade & ability, and they cannot fill command slots they don't fit.

The officer corps being discussed here is primarily for levels above local (reality). It is about filling ICS slots in place of & in charge of paid emergency responders, not cause we're cool, but cause that individual is a very experienced trained leader/officer who has dedicated many years exclusively to doing that one ICS position. It's also about having real leadership all the way up the chain with people you can respect & know they earned their place with hard work smarts & merit with the AF having a say at every promotion. It's about being capable of running a 50-80k member non-profit organization and the AFAux, and not only accountable but proud to show results in an inspection. It's about gaining the trust of Congress & the AF in the quality of our people so that we in turn gain the equipment &/or opportunities to truly serve the real needs of our country & to act as a force multiplier to the AF in time of war & tight budgets, as well as marching forward on a strategic vision for full partnership in the total-AF.

Hobby?
You can describe CAP as a hobby & our members as volunteers. It's not hard to stretch to those definitions. You can also describe it as being in the service of the military & country, which is not a hobby, but an obligation of duty upon which people desperately depend on your actions for their lives. To that end you can look at a volunteer firefighter, who is not participating in a hobby, regardless of pay. You can also call our members volunteers, though they take part in skilled professional service, and the word volunteer implies a person off the street with no training or qualification. In short, we understand CAP members don't get paid, but it is very harmful to the organization to use those words in describing a level of service they do not describe.

Gatekeepers?
A quick word back on education... When you take charge of people you have two choices. 1) care about being liked, be soft on them, and worry of your letting them have enough fun; or 2) set strict standards from the first & make swift corrections the firs time anyone waivers. In the first example, your limits will be tested & by allowing people freedom to do as they wish you sacrifice your right to have authority over them & things get out of hand quickly. Reclaiming that authority can't be done quickly in an emergency & when done requires stomping on them. Ultimately these people will enjoy themselves the least. In the second example, you've established tight boundaries & enforced them when the testing was small so you've overall applied the least force & the least amount of times to get the results you want. These people will ultimately be happier in the structured program with strong leadership. That doesn't have anything to do with the military, UCMJ, or any other related issue, it predates them. It should be applied to volunteers as well as paid employees. And, the AF believes in it. 

Now I say that because we have to pick who goes to officer training (the pipeline to upper level management), and who stays down at the local units doing the front line work of CAP. If you put an unqualified person in that training and they fail, then they're gone. You put that same person on track to be an NCO leader, and you can get the most out of them. If they do a super job in that process & prove themselves to be great leaders, then you can recommend them for a waiver & make you case to the selection board that they deserve chance to be an officer, and if they deserve it they'll get it the shot, even if it means a PhD has to wait their turn.

[Dragoon]

Actually, NCOs very much can & will command local units, as will senior 1Lt-junior Capts, but not SrA, 2Lts, or Majors. That's the operational leadership point, SSgt-TSgt & 1Lt-Capt. And, yes to the greatest extent possible grades & positions will be tied together. We can't do it as effectively as the military because we can move people around, but to the greatest extent possible we'll stick to the system. If there are exceptions they'll be as minor as we can make them & watched closely.

If both NCOs and Junior Officers can do the same jobs and fill the same slots, then you don't need both.  Just make everyone junior officers and be done with it.

Most officers won't be assigned to local units & NCOs will have priority in those slots. NCO also lead the way on ES & run the local cadet program. Officers get exposed to ES by earning a rating & doing it for a couple years, but after that will rarely be allowed in the field except to stay current & familiar. Instead they will be training long & hard for the ICS staff positions back at base, & relying on the expert field operators (enlisted) to actually accomplish the mission. On the day-to-day stuff, they'll be on a mini-group level staff doing all the positions in 20-1 that you can't fill & lifting all the staff load up off your unit it can laser focus on just the missions while doing only the most necessary admin/personnel/testing functions locally.

The minute you tell officers that they can't fly missions anymore or chase ELTs in the dark and have to work mission staff, you'll have a revolt.  Today, some of our most critical HLS missions are being flown by former Wing and Region Commanders!

This is the problem that CAP must deal with - people wish to work at all levels of the system, and move freely between those levels as their desires and schedules change.  They aren't going to be pigeon-holed into a limited set of functions based on what's on their collar.

Field grade officer, like Iowa, get pulled up to Gp/Wing staff slots, or reserve billets with those units or the Wg reserve (holding) unit. NCOs & junior officers CAN work in positions above the levels I just stated, but it would be commensurate with their grade & ability, and they cannot fill command slots they don't fit. 

That kind of "up or out" policy works fine in the Guard and Reserve where money is changing hands.  But for volunteers, when the Lt Col wants to take a break and work at the squadron as a staffer, you're going to tell him "No, you have to commute 100 miles to work on Group staff?"


I really don't think this is a viable model for the organization.  It gives up the inherent flexibility of a group of volunteers with a wide range of talents and differing levels of commitment.

Position based rank might work better, as it allows you to change your status from Field Grade Officer/Mission Staff back to Junior Officer/Ground Team Leader and back again as you move through your CAP years.