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Education in the US military

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128shot

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I know the military offers an assortment of careers and educational opportunities, but aside from the strictly military applications of some training, what is the quality of education on jobs that have civilian use to?

Whats the equivalent of lets say being trained as a civil engineer or computer programmer in the military vs a traditional university education for these said fields or any others?

Is the transition from military-civilian good on job training? Certainly, does the military have a way for you to attain more than one skill over the same 4 year period a uni does? (double majoring)
 
This is going to be variable, but in short I would rate officer training high, enlisted training inconsistent. Military Academies are good schools, and the National War College and related institutions are supposed to be the best by far in relation to military matters. Not just in comparison to other schools that have national security programs, but in comparison to the theoretically best quality vs. the lowest. I’ve heard okay things about the technical institutes that the military runs, for instance AFIT Air Force Institute of Technology. These are all accrediting schools offering bachelors, masters and PhDs. While a lot of the academy grads I’ve come into contract with are total *******s, and possibly incompetent in leaders, they are competent at their degree related material. For instance, the weather officer really knew what they were talking about when it came to weather.

Enlisted training is good or bad depending on how you look at it. The military often is able to come up with an effective step by step process for fairly complicated tasks. Translation for example. This allows to train people whose educational and intellectual background may have prevented them from having a similar career in the civilian world. Unfortunately when they encounter situations that deviate from the given processes, that training may not help the individual perform their task. I was a computer programmer in the Air Force, and they hadn’t created that processes I referred to. The training I received was horrific, and the manner in which military conducted its software programs was unimaginably bad. I just don’t think that the Air Force wanted to spend the effort to make their training worth while. In a lot of areas the military has the option to simply throw people at a problem, and they do.

There are other factors though. Military doctors go to the same schools every other doctors do. But, the military doctors are notoriously bad. There are several reasons I’ve heard suggested. One is that military doctors often only deal with common situation when seeing patients in non-combat situation. And doctors in war zones deal with horrible life and limb injuries. Meaning that if you have a slightly uncommon condition, which most people do, they take too long to diagnose it and don’t know how to treat it. The other suggestion is simply that competent doctors go to good jobs and good hospitals, and the military gets send string doctors from second string schools. This applies to other officer fields too.

I think the biggest advantage the military has over civilians is that run you through training fast and put you in an operational environment. Doing your job teaches you what you need to know, it isn’t that classroom theory isn’t applicable, but if your smart you’ll pick that up anyways, and if your not, well you probably aren’t doing a job that would require that anyways. The biggest disadvantage is your doing military related things, which aren’t always transferable to the civilian world, even if you have a job that seems like it would be, like engineering.
 
128shot said:
I know the military offers an assortment of careers and educational opportunities, but aside from the strictly military applications of some training, what is the quality of education on jobs that have civilian use to?

Whats the equivalent of lets say being trained as a civil engineer or computer programmer in the military vs a traditional university education for these said fields or any others?

Is the transition from military-civilian good on job training? Certainly, does the military have a way for you to attain more than one skill over the same 4 year period a uni does? (double majoring)
Click to expand...

A lot of what you're asking depends on which branch of service you're in, and what your military specialty is.

For example, I was in the Air Force. I went through nearly 9 months of school for Ground Radio Maintenance. In the civilian world, had I wanted to, I could have pursued a job with any airport in the country, fixing the radios used to communicate between the air traffic control tower and the planes. I also could have pursued a job with companies like Raytheon. I could have made some good money doing either.

Depending on how long you serve, you can cross train into another specialty. I actually spent the last year and a half of my service working what we called job control - I was responsible for coordinating maintenance for the various communications equipment on base. I didn't have to cross train into that, as it's not something that they have an AFSC for, technically...they just pull people from their work centers within the communications squadron to do it for awhile, though I actually requested to go do it. That would basically translate into being a secretary or receptionist in the civilian world.

My husband on the other hand....he served in the Army as a Chemical Operations Specialist. Handing out chem gear and gas masks, conducting training for his company, that sort of thing. There's not a whole lot in the civilian world that that would translate into.
 
It all really depends on your specialty really. And there are ways to translate you military classroom work into college credits from schools that will accepts them. In my specialty in the Marine Corps, which was an Avionics Technician for F/A-18 aircraft I had about an associates degree worth of credits in about a year. Plus I could get FCC licences and other things I would need for my civilian job for relativley cheap. Also there were programs for accounting your work in the military towards hours of apprenticeship too.
Really the education in the military is decent, but it is hurried along to get people out into the fleet. I spent my first year of enlistment in boot camp, Marine Combat training, and Avionics schools. And the schools aren't like college, where you go to class for a hour then have 2 hours before your next class. It was 9 hours of classroom everday, plus whatever physical conditioning you did. Some people can't catch on fast enough, and usually get dropped back if they aren't showing aptitude in their specialty. And if the drop backs don't help, then they get shifted elsewhere.
 
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