Officer Commissioning Programs

In fiscal year 1990, the Pentagon spent more than $1.5 billion to train newly commissioned officers. This report reviews the three main officer-commissioning training programs in each service--the academies, the Reserve Officers' Training Corps, and the Officer Candidate Schools. GAO discusses the cost of training an officer, the quality of officers trained by the various commissioning sources, the effectiveness of management oversight of officer training, and the immediate opportunities to cut costs.

GAO found that: (1) it was difficult to compare or determine costs of commissioning programs because of nonuniform reporting criteria and lack of data; (2) the service academies were the most expensive commissioning source; (3) special non-Army commissioning programs for needed specialties, affirmative action, and enlisted personnel were not included in OCS costs, and some were as expensive per graduate as ROTC and the service academies; (4) the services did not assess program effectiveness or the quality of the officers produced; (5) in 1989, DOD initiated a unit cost resourcing system that only converted costs from existing financial systems into a standard format; (6) all commissioning programs selected candidates from highly qualified applicants, and most required graduates to have a college degree; (7) the services determined that officer performance and career progression did not vary as to the commissioning source, but officers' core curriculum knowledge and skill proficiency were unknown, and retention of officers varied by source; and (8) force reductions caused an oversupply of officers. GAO also found that: (1) the services have reduced the number of officers produced by OCS programs, DOD has directed that ROTC production be reduced and inefficient units closed, and Congress has limited each academy's total enrollment to 4,000 beginning in 1995; (2) the services have delayed active duty assignments for some new ROTC graduates or offered voluntary releases from their service obligations; (3) no service systematically assessed its future officer needs or determined the most cost-effective allocation of officers; (4) DOD had limited management and oversight over the commissioning programs; (5) some Navy programs were duplicative; and (6) program and staff consolidation could cut costs and improve effectiveness in all the services.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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