It’s 2017. The Military Still Requires Officers To Have College Degrees. Why?

It's a question of initiative and responsibility. A 4-year degree demonstrates a prolonged period where you've kept yourself beholden to a set of tasks and completed them successfully. If you're doing OCS, you must have a competitive GPA, which means you were self-motivated and worked your way through it with some level of competency. If it's through ROTC or an Academy, it's a 4-year tryout with a bunch of officers training, guiding, grading, and evaluating you to either mold you into an acceptable officer or weed you out of the program.

It's not the degree itself that matters, is my point. It amazes me how many people don't seem to grasp that.

The article gripes that "today, even experienced noncommissioned officers with unblemished records have to get check-the-box degrees in order to be eligible for most commissioning programs."

The reality is that all enlisted personnel are being pushed to complete "check-the-box" credit hours, whether from hack or credible universities, just to give the impression of being ahead of their peers for promotion.

The requirement as a normal practice doesn't seem all that out of whack. That same requirement exists in much of the civilian sector.

Hidden somewhere in there may be a question about the need for a dual rank structure. I've had my questions about that as well, but at the end of the day it doesn't bother me all that much since there is pretty much theoretical equal opportunity for all of us to have taken the path required to become an officer instead of doing what I did, which is become enlisted and then go to college after I got out.