Should a 4-year degree be a requirement for selection to E-9?

NO !!

I would not necessarily say a bachelor's degree but at least an associate degree. There are many NCOs who can't write an effective counseling or NCOER or that would allow their Soldier's NCOER to be delinquent because of their fear of writing. I agree that training and leadership are very important but it all has to be properly documented to receive credit. Just my personal opinion.

The civilian world is slowly realizing the folly of the repeatedly expressed or implied opinions of every guidance counselor, high school teacher, or business "professional" that if you don't have a college degree you aren't going to be successful in life. There are entire industries that are screaming for tradesmen. Canada has gone so far as incentives folks going to trade school just to be able to keep their economy going. What does this have to do with the question at hand you may ask? The enlisted person has access to the greatest trade school there is. Military training. I've spent 20+ yrs as an aviation electrician (now AWF) turning wrenches and splicing wires. My job now is to teach those skills to the next generation and keep our planes in the air. Nothing in a bachelor degree program is required for that. I'm not a manager I'm a technician. You want a manager go get an officer they have degrees. If any enlisted member has the desire to go to college more power to them but no way should it be required and unless it directly correlates to their MOS/NEC I have a little heartburn with it being an added point value in their advancement at all. I'd rather reward my aircraft mechanics for going to school and getting their A&P license than getting their buisness degrees.

Off soap box

As long as soldiers skills are included in the accreditation!

Yes it should. It should be required for each step in the senior NCO selection. Associates for E-8 bachelors for Sergeant Major. At a minimum they should be working on masters when CSM, it should be in the field they are working in such as hospital CSM should be working on masters for business in healthcare. They are in an extremely high leadership position at that point in their career.

I think that a vast majority of the comments / replies here coming from senior NCOs miss the point a little bit. The question is whether 4-year degree should be required for selection to E-9, not whether the degree is required for selection for any other NCO grade. And I would say, not required but it should serve as something that separates them from peers. I say that with a caveat. Obviously the degree should focus towards the career field that the NCO is in, or perhaps Organizational Management. And it should come from an accredited program (doesn’t have to be a regular brick and mortar university, online degrees are fine but we need to focus on weeding out these “basket weaving“ degrees that are acquired just to get promotion points – and focus on quality and relevance of the degree). I have to agree with a lot of the comments from the NCOs (and being a prior NCO myself), the goal of every NCO should still focus on leading Soldiers – something that unfortunately we have gone away from over the span of last decade (I can’t tell you how many NCOs don’t know the first sentence of their Creed). But to say that degrees detract from that is a sign of bad leadership itself – if an NCO is only getting a degree to get promotion points and not focusing on leading his team, squad, platoon or company – then the NCO’s above him/her have failed them. As a platoon sergeant, I would have chewed my squad and team leaders’ a$$ if their excuse for not taking care of training Soldiers was, “I’m working on my college classes”. Soldiers first and foremost, then career advancement. However, I always focused on developing ways to motivate my Soldiers to better themselves through furthering their education. One of the comments below from an E7 stated that good NCOs spend all their time training and leading Soldiers, and that they’re essentially too busy to get a degree, and if they did get a degree that they’re not focusing on being an NCO. That’s a loaded statement as well – good leaders can delegate down to their squad and team leaders – bring them up, you can’t make yourself invaluable. And being able to juggle and multitask and still managed to get everything done (including a college degree) should be rewarded – that’s what separates the best from the average. I don’t think that promotions through E8 should be merited on just degrees, and by no means should they take away from years of experience and the volume of work put in by the NCOs who choose not to go to college, or simply cannot. However, I want to bring the point back to the question asked - whether 4-year degree should be required for selection to E-9 (no other grade below), so everybody harping about it that’s an E8 and below, cool down a little bit, and hear my argument. If you as an E8 have reached the time in your career where you’re looking at selection for E9, it’s safe to assume that you have around 20 years of service. As an E8 the level of hands on training and Soldier management by this time in your career should be minimal and focusing on grooming those E6s and E7s (who are the ones responsible for tactical level training to begin with). You as an E8 should focus on Operational and Strategic level tasks that you would see at the E9 level. If you have been a high-speed, low-drag NCO and during this time managed to get a 4-year (Bachelor’s / Baccalaureate) degree, you should be rewarded (all other things being equal), in the selection process. As a company commander, my 1SG already had his Bachelor’s degree and was working on his Masters in Organizational Leadership – I applauded it! And praised him for taking the initiative to better himself. But I made it perfectly clear that his education does not supersede his duties as the senior enlisted leader for the company. We all know the age old argument that having a degree, can’t substitute for years of experience. But in today’s world NCOs need to be adaptive and continual learners, especially at that level. Having a career or leadership/management focused degree is an enabler. Again, I don’t think it should be a requirement, but it should be rewarded.
As we engineers say - Essayons!

Why should it be? At the end of the day it's just a piece of paper.

Sounds like box checking to me. We have more than enough of that in the military already and it shows. So...no don't make it a requirement.

Absolutely.

While I believe that getting an education of a different kind could benefit not just the senior NCO, but their subordinates, I don't think it should be mandated. However, I also believe it could help senior NCO's at the highest level recognize the importance of an education and in turn make them bigger advocates for lower enlisted to pursue an education in the event they don't want to make the military a career.
School isn't for everyone, just like the military isn't for everyone. We don't force civilians in this country to join. We shouldn't force our guys to go to school.