OFFICER CORPS STRATEGY SERIES

ACCESSING TALENT:

THE FOUNDATION OF A U.S. ARMY OFFICER 

CORPS STRATEGY

Casey Wardynski

David S. Lyle

Michael J. Colarusso

February 2010

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This monograph is the fourth in a series of six monographs 

that analyze the development of an Officer Corps strategy. 

Previous volumes are:

1 - Towards A U.S. Army Officer Corps Strategy for Success: A Proposed 

Human Capital Model Focused Upon Talent, by Colonel Casey 

Wardynski, Major David S. Lyle, and Lieutenant Colonel 

(Ret.) Michael J. Colarusso, April 2009.

2 - Talent: Implications for a U.S. Army Officer Corps Strategy, 

by Colonel Casey Wardynski, Major David S. Lyle, and 

Lieutenant Colonel (Ret.) Michael J. Colarusso, November 

2009.
iii

3 - Towards a U.S. Army Officer Corps Strategy for Success: Retaining 

Talent, by Colonel Casey Wardynski, Major David S. Lyle, and 

Lieutenant Colonel (Ret.) Michael J. Colarusso, January 2010.

ISBN 1-58487-428-7
iv

FOREWORD

Accessing Talent: The Foundation of a U.S. Army 

Officer Corps Strategy, is the fourth of six monographs 

focused upon officer talent management in the U.S. 

Army. In it, Colonel Casey Wardynski, Major David 

S. Lyle, and Lieutenant Colonel (Ret.) Michael J. 

Colarusso continue their examination of how the U.S. 

Army accesses, develops, retains, and employs officer 

talent. In particular, they focus upon the ways in which 

dynamic labor market conditions and generational 

preferences have shaped service propensity among 

potential officer prospects. 

As in the previous volumes of this series, the 

authors first articulate a theoretical framework for 

improvement and then demonstrate how the application of those theories can yield desired results. 

In sum, they explain why a proper talent accessions 

strategy can create a “positive sum game” for the Army 

as perhaps nothing else can.

Since the officer accessions process presents the 

Army with a dramatic opportunity to leverage talent 

investments made by others, the theories and programs discussed in this monograph merit thoughtful 

consideration.

DOUGLAS C. LOVELACE, JR.

Director

Strategic Studies Institute 
v

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

CASEY WARDYNSKI is Director of the Office of 

Economic and Manpower Analysis and an Associate 

Professor of Economics at the United States Military 

Academy, West Point, NY. In addition to creating 

the concepts for the “America’s Army” game and 

the Army’s pre-commissioning retention incentives, 

Colonel Wardynski has published in the area of 

military compensation policy and manpower. Colonel 

Wardynski earned a B.S. at West Point, a Masters in 

Public Policy at Harvard, and a Ph.D. in Policy Analysis 

from the Rand Graduate School.

DAVID S. LYLE is an Associate Professor of Economics 

and Deputy Director of the Office of Economic and 

Manpower Analysis at the United States Military 

Academy, West Point, NY. He has publications in 

the Journal of Political Economy, the Journal of Labor 

Economics, the Review of Economics and Statistics, 

the American Economic Journal: Applied, and the 

Economics of Education Review. Major Lyle earned a 

B.S. at West Point and a Ph.D. in Economics from the 

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

MICHAEL J. COLARUSSO is a research analyst in 

the Office of Economic and Manpower Analysis at 

the United States Military Academy, West Point, NY. 

He is a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel and has 

served in a variety of military positions, to include as 

an Assistant Professor of History at West Point. Mr. 

Colarusso earned a B.A. in History from Saint John’s 

University and a M.A. in History from the Pennsylvania 

State University.
vi

SUMMARY

 Once the Army accesses a cohort of officers, it must 

live with them throughout a 30-year career span. This 

is because, unlike most enterprises, the Army cannot 

buy talent from elsewhere to fill shortfalls at its mid 

and upper-level ranks. The Officer Corps embodies a 

unique profession whose culture and core warfighting 

abilities take years to develop. This means that each 

new officer cohort represents far more than the Army’s 

latest crop of junior leaders; they are the feedstock for 

its future field grade and general officers. As a group, 

they must therefore possess the depth and breadth of 

talent needed not just to lead platoon-sized formations, 

but to meet future operational and strategic leadership 

demands as well.

Accessing the right officer talent directly improves 

the efficiency and productivity of the Officer Corps 

by shortening developmental time and reducing 

rework and retraining costs. Hand-in-hand with 

these efficiencies, improvements in talent acquisition 

provide greater flexibility to employ officers against 

uncertain future requirements. Accessing the right 

talent today also burnishes the Army’s reputation, 

creating a virtuous cycle that makes it easier to attract 

talented young people tomorrow. It also increases the 

likelihood of retaining talent, particularly when sound 

accessions programs are linked to targeted retention 

initiatives.

Accessing the “right” talent means more than 

accessing the correct number of officers to fill existing 

billets. It means acquiring the proper breadth and 

depth of talent, the diverse skills, knowledge and 

behaviors actually in demand across the Army’s 

organizations, both now and in the future. It also 
vii

means recalibrating notions of “fairness.” While the 

Army must afford equal opportunities to all, the fairest

accessions behavior it can engage in is commissioning 

new officers with the talent needed to fight and win 

wars at the lowest cost in American lives and taxpayer 

dollars. Focusing a share of accessions efforts toward 

desired ethnographic or demographic groupings can 

be tremendously beneficial, provided these efforts are 

not at the expense of talent considerations.

The good news is that across virtually all 

ethnographic and demographic segments in the United 

States, the current generation of accessions-age young 

people is far larger, far more diverse, better educated, 

smokes less, drinks less, and generally enjoys greater 

well-being than the one preceding it. Now more than 

ever before, the Army can pursue diversity in its 

Officer Corps without putting talent at risk, provided 

its accessions effort rests upon sound theoretical 

principles. 

First, the Army must understand the market 

place in which it competes. In an all-volunteer force, 

the prospect pool ultimately determines the scope 

and tempo of Army talent accessions. The physical 

demands and risks associated with Army service 

means that at some point the pool of willing prospects 

will begin to dwindle. Therefore, understanding the 

shocks that shift the labor supply curve, and how each 

military age generation will respond to these shocks, 

is central to understanding the talent market in which 

the Army competes for officers.

Second, the Army must know how to communicate 

with prospects and understand how they may respond 

to information. The Millennial Generation comprises 

the bulk of today’s officer prospect market, and the 

Information Age has profoundly shaped their view of 
viii

the military. These young people have much less direct 

exposure to the military than previous generations of 

young people, most of whom had vicarious contact 

with millions of World War II or Cold War-era service 

veterans. In the absence of such direct connections, 

they must rely on popular culture, movies, television, 

or the internet for information regarding Army officer 

service. 

If the Army fails to provide accurate and easily 

assimilated information about officership, prospect 

impressions may be unduly shaped by the wealth of 

incomplete, dated, or skewed information available 

from thousands of media sources. Getting talented 

young people interested in the Army and overcoming 

its negative perceptions relative to the other services 

therefore requires innovative marketing. Today’s 

military-age young people are consumers of data, live 

on the internet, play virtual games, develop virtual 

networks, and have lived most of their life in relative 

economic prosperity. Successfully framing the Army 

for them requires an approach that makes the Army 

more engaging, informative, socially based, and 

interactive. 

Successful talent accessions set the table for a potent 

Officer Corps strategy. In all other areas (employing, 

developing, and retaining officer talent), the Army 

faces a zero-sum game—if it employs talent in one 

area, it is unavailable elsewhere. By committing the 

right talent and resources to its officer accessions effort, 

however, the Army can increase overall talent levels 

without detracting from its productivity elsewhere. In 

the long run, this is a positive sum game, one where 

the capabilities of the Officer Corps are driven upward 

by human capital acquired from outside the Army.
1

ACCESSING TALENT:

THE FOUNDATION OF A U.S. ARMY OFFICER 

CORPS STRATEGY

Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.

Warren Buffett1

INTRODUCTION 

Since its completion in 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge 

has been a symbol of American ingenuity and 

industrial dominance. Due to the careful planning 

and forward-looking nature of its principal architect, 

John Roebling, the span was thoughtfully designed 

and ideally located, creating a powerful and enduring 

economic bond between Brooklyn and Manhattan that 

resulted in their incorporation as one city in 1898. The 

bridge has met New York City’s ever changing needs 

for over 125 years, and against a construction cost of 

$15 million it has generated billions in commerce, a 

tremendous return upon investment.2

Just as cities invest in infrastructure, the United 

States invests a great deal in national security, and the 

acquisition of talented Army officers is at the core of its 

portfolio. In many ways, this investment is analogous 

to the fixed investment in a bridge—once built, it cannot 

be moved. So too, once the Army accesses a cohort of 

officers, it must live with them throughout a 30-year 

career span. Each officer represents a component of 

that span; the struts, ties, piers, and cables needed 

to carry the Army from the present to the future. 

Collectively, they must possess the right talents, equal 

to both current and future demands. 
2

The reason for this is that unlike most enterprises, 

the Army cannot buy talent from elsewhere to fill 

shortfalls at its mid and upper-level ranks. The Officer 

Corps embodies a unique profession whose culture 

and core warfighting abilities take years to develop. 

This means that each new officer cohort represents 

far more than the Army’s latest crop of junior leaders. 

They are the feedstock for its future field grade and 

general officers. As a group, they must therefore 

possess the depth and breadth of talent needed not just 

to lead platoon-sized formations, but to meet future 

operational and strategic leadership demands as well 

(see Figure 1). 

Accessing the right officer talent has a positive effect that 

cascades through the rest of the officer career model. 

It directly improves the efficiency and productivity 

of the Officer Corps by shortening developmental time 

and reducing rework and retraining costs. Hand-inFigure 1. Army Officer Human Capital Model.
3

hand with these efficiencies, improvements in talent 

acquisition provide greater flexibility to employ officers 

against uncertain future requirements. Accessing the 

right talent today also burnishes the Army’s reputation, 

creating a virtuous cycle that makes it easier to attract 

talented young people tomorrow. Accessing the right 

people also increases the likelihood of retaining them, 

particularly when reinforced by targeted retention 

programs.

As discussed in the third monograph of this series, 

much of the talent in demand in the Army is generally 

in demand elsewhere. These talents are therefore 

associated with higher opportunity costs, which reduce 

retention propensity. Improving talent matching 

through accessions, however, can counter this effect 

by indirectly increasing career satisfaction, as officers 

benefit from working within their talent set alongside 

similarly talented officers. These effects, coupled with 

targeted retention incentives such as the Officer Career 

Satisfaction Program (OCSP), may actually result in 

higher retention rates.3

Anyone would agree that accessing the right talent 

can yield tremendous benefits to the Officer Corps, but 

what does “right” mean? In our view, it is more than 

accessing the correct number of officers to fill existing 

billets. It means acquiring the proper breadth and depth 

of talent, the diverse skills, knowledge, and behaviors 

actually in demand across the Army’s organizations, 

both now and in the future. 

It also means recalibrating notions of fairness. 

While the Army must afford equal opportunities to 

all, the fairest accessions behavior it can engage in is 

commissioning new officers with the talent needed to 

fight and win wars at the lowest cost in American lives 

and taxpayer dollars. Focusing a share of accessions 
4

efforts toward desired ethnographic or demographic 

groupings can be tremendously beneficial, provided 

these efforts are not at the expense of talent considerations. If talent requirements are ignored, however, the 

Army stands to reduce rather than increase diversity 

levels, simultaneously lowering the mean performance 

of the Officer Corps.

For example, bringing in and retaining a fixed 

percentage of tall officers (or brown-eyed, left-handed, 

etc.) simply because they are tall and without regard 

for talent would require the Army to continually 

write promotion board guidance to keep these 

officers competitive with their peers. It could actually 

reduce retention rates among tall officers, as those 

commissioned on the basis of height rather than talent 

would be less capable role models to their young 

counterparts. This could create a negative experience 

for those young officers, engendering talent flight. 

Additionally, it would undermine Army efforts to 

continuously screen, vet, and cull officer talent.

The good news is that across virtually all 

ethnographic and demographic segments in the United 

States, the current generation of accessions-age young 

people is far larger, far more diverse, better educated, 

smokes less, drinks less, and generally enjoys greater 

well-being than the one preceding it.4

 Now, more 

than ever before, the Army can pursue diversity in its 

Officer Corps without putting talent at risk, provided 

its accessions effort rests upon sound theoretical 

principles. 
5

DISPARATE YET COMPLEMENTARY 

COMMISSIONING SOURCES 

The Army has a range of commissioning sources 

with which to acquire the talent it needs by setting 

mission requirements for each and resourcing them 

accordingly. Although these sources are routinely 

compared with one another, such comparisons are 

misleading and counterproductive. The commissioning 

sources were designed to be complementary, with 

each specifically resourced to attract different talent 

populations based upon the screening, vetting, and 

culling measures it employs (see Figure 2). The rigor 

of these measures is determined by both the length of 

time and the number of dimensions an individual is 

evaluated against. 

Figure 2. Screening, Vetting, and Culling 

Continuum.

At one end of this continuum, the Army resources 

the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, 

to employ rigorous screening, vetting, and culling 

measures. It competes with the best colleges and 

universities throughout the nation for college bound 

talent. West Point screens more than 11,000 applicants 

each year to accept some 1,300 officer candidates. It 

provides an immersive, 47-month developmental 
6

and higher education experience to vet these officer 

candidates against both time-proven standards and 

one another. Under the continuous mentorship of 

seasoned cadre, some 28 percent of each class is culled 

prior to commissioning.5

At the other end of the continuum is Officer 

Candidate School (OCS) with the Enlistment Option 

(EO). OCS-EO is resourced to attract college educated 

individuals who choose to pursue a commission after 

completing their undergraduate education. Minimal 

screening, vetting, and culling measures require 

candidates to only complete enlisted basic training 

followed by the 90-day OCS course prior to their 

commissioning. This quick-turn commissioning source 

is charged with rounding out any shortfalls in officer 

accessions. 

In between these two sources is OCS In-Service 

(IS). OCS-IS is resourced to target successful enlisted 

personnel with the potential and proclivity for 

commissioned service. Years of performance while 

serving as a Soldier and the 90-day OCS course 

serve as the primary screening, vetting, and culling 

mechanisms. Roughly 10 percent of each OCS-IS cohort 

is culled prior to commissioning.

Lying between West Point and OCS-IS on the 

screen-vet-cull continuum is the Reserve Officer 

Training Corps (ROTC) scholarship program. Since 

World War II, ROTC has been the largest source 

of officer accessions, producing up to 70 percent of 

all commissioned officers in some years. With 273 

host battalions supporting cadets at more than 1,200 

colleges and universities throughout the country, 

ROTC offers leadership development and military 

instruction to both scholarship and nonscholarship 

students. The most rigorous screening occurs via 
7

scholarship and college applications, while vetting 

and culling takes place during military instruction and 

training exercises. Academic performance and degree 

completion are additional vetting and culling measures. ROTC spans the full spectrum of school quality 

and disciplines, from Ivy League to senior military 

colleges to open enrollment. It is resourced to access 

officers with diverse degrees and demographic characteristics. Note that we place ROTC nonscholarship 

cadets between OCS-IS and OCS-EO on the screenvet-cull continuum. While ROTC nonscholarship 

cadets have no scholarship screen, they are otherwise 

subject to the same vetting and culling mechanisms as 

their scholarship counterparts. 

Officer evaluation reports (OERs) and selection rates 

to battalion and brigade command support our view 

that the Army resources each source of commission to 

attract different types of talent. Figure 3 shows how 

performance in key company grade positions, through 

the rank of captain, sorts nearly identically with our 

screening, vetting, and culling continuum. However, 

in the field grade ranks, there is a slight shift in that 

ROTC nonscholarship officers perform better than 

OCS-IS in battalion and brigade level S3/XO positions 

and are more likely to be selected for battalion and 

brigade command. In general, commissioning sources 

with higher screening, vetting, and culling thresholds 

increase the odds of producing talent matches for 

duties that the Army deems critical, particularly as job 

complexity increases. 
8

NOTE: OCS-EO officers are not represented due to the unavailability of senior 

rater profile data on these officers.

Figure 3. Performance and Selection to Command.

To avoid any misinterpretation of Figure 3, we 

make two clarifying points. First, these rates represent 

populations. There are equally talented individual

officers from each source of commission, but on 

average they sort along the screen-vet-cull continuum 

in Figure 2.6

 Second, this is not an argument about 

the merits of each commissioning source—they each 

have merit. We are simply pointing out the correlation 

between performance and Army resourcing—the 

higher the investment (West Point and ROTC 3 and 

4-year scholarship officers), the greater the mean 

performance. Figure 4 bears this out. Note that West 

Point has the highest average cost per commission, 

ROTC nonscholarship the lowest, and the costs of the 

other commissioning sources sort identically to both 
9

the screen-vet-cull continuum in Figure 2 and the 

performance data in Figure 3.

Figure 4. Average Cost of Commission.

The exception is OCS-EO. This is because OCS-EO was 

designed as a stop-gap commissioning source to round 

out shortfalls, and the resources required to fund it 

on short notice (covering student loans up to $80,000, 

in particular) make it relatively expensive despite its 

lower degree of screening, vetting, and culling. 

CONCERNING TRENDS IN OFFICER 

ACCESSIONS

In light of the role that Army officers play in U.S. 

national security strategy, the role that accessions 

play in the officer career model, and the amount that 

taxpayers invest in each officer, recent trends in officer 

accessions are cause for concern. Figure 5 shows the 

substantial shift in the mix of officer accessions by 

source of commission over the past 2 decades. 
10

The shift in ROTC and OCS accessions is so striking 

that a casual observer might conclude that it is the 

result of some deliberate plan on the part of the Army. 

Unfortunately, it is not. Rather, it is a result of the Army 

not having an Officer Corps strategy that integrates 

the four components of the officer career model. As we 

have described in our previous monographs, this shift 

in accessions is due primarily to low retention among 

officers commissioned in the mid-1980s through 

today. Commensurate with the rise of the information 

age, there has been an increased demand in the labor 

market for problem-solving, knowledge creation, and 

conceptualization talents. A result has been an exodus 

of Army officer talent, principally seasoned captains. 

In response, the Army increased its annual accession 

missions. With West Point capped by the United States 

Code at 4,400 cadets and with ROTC experiencing 

significant resource cuts during the post-Cold War 

drawdown, the Army turned to OCS to fill the gaps. 

As Figure 5 indicates, this shift began in 1998, long 

Figure 5. Officer Accessions Mix by Source 

of Commission.
11

before the current conflict. Modularity and increases in 

the Army’s end-strength resulting from the global war 

on terrorism (GWOT) did exacerbate the shift, but the 

seeds of the problem were sown some 2 decades ago. 

At the same time that the Army was experiencing an 

epochal change in labor market conditions and officer 

retention behavior, reductions during the drawdown 

in the 1990s literally gutted ROTC, forcing the Army 

to further increase OCS production to fill shortages. 

As shown in Figure 6, the number of officers assigned 

as ROTC cadre declined by more than 50 percent 

over the last 2 decades. To offset this dramatic loss in 

military leadership, the Army hired contracted cadre, 

a less than ideal substitute. This gutting of ROTC 

closely corresponded with a period of declining cadet 

enrollments which began in 1990 and lasted through 

2006.7

Figure 6. Significant Cuts in ROTC Officer Cadre.

School Entry Year
12

Changes in ROTC scholarship management compounded the problem. Prior to 1998, scholarship candidates applied to a centralized board. If awarded a 

scholarship, applicants could apply it to any school 

that offered an ROTC program. In 1998, however, 

ROTC introduced the Campus Based Scholarship Program (CBSP), with scholarship candidates applying 

directly to individual ROTC detachments. This change 

was meant to save costs by fixing the number of 

scholarship positions at each school, thereby reducing 

year-to-year fluctuations in cadet enrollment at 

different colleges. It was also meant to give Professors 

of Military Science greater discretion over the process 

at their college, as they could now screen applicants 

locally and award scholarships accordingly. Whether 

or not this would attract better talent matches to ROTC 

was not a key consideration.8

One of the unintended but nonetheless real 

consequences of this change was that it severely 

restricted a scholarship candidate’s decision space. 

Instead of receiving a scholarship that could be applied 

at the school of his or her choice, the scholarship was 

now tied to a specific school. A candidate receiving 

an ROTC scholarship to Penn State, for example, but 

who also applied to and was accepted at Notre Dame 

without an ROTC scholarship now faced a difficult 

decision. Forcing candidates to choose between an 

unfunded education at their school of choice versus 

an ROTC scholarship at their second or third choice 

significantly lowered the utility and appeal of ROTC 

scholarships. As compared with the Air Force and 

Navy, both of which continued to offer centralized 

scholarships, the value of an Army ROTC scholarship 

was comparatively lower. 
13

As cuts to ROTC diminished its ability to 

commission officers, and since it takes as much as 4 

years to fix shortfalls in ROTC production, the Army 

turned to OCS, which could produce an officer in 

a matter of months. The rise in OCS from 9 percent 

of accessions prior to 1998 to nearly 40 percent of 

accessions in 2008 occurred first in the OCS InService (IS) program, which harvests officers from the 

enlisted ranks. When OCS-IS reached its maximum 

commissioning capacity, the Army expanded the OCS 

Enlisted Option (EO) program, which rapidly brings 

college educated civilians into the Officer Corps. By 

2006, total OCS production was split evenly between 

OCS-EO and OCS-IS, and since 2006, OCS-EO has 

comprised more than 60 percent of OCS accessions. 

Although OCS accessions provide the Army with 

the flexibility to expand quickly, these significant 

increases in OCS accessions actually ended up 

exacerbating the retention problem. OCS-EO officers 

retain through 6 years of service at the lowest rates (and 

the Army consequently receives the fewest man-years 

of service from them). This is because their commissioning active duty service obligation (ADSO) expires 

after just 3 years, and they have not been subjected 

to the more rigorous screening, vetting, and culling 

of the other commissioning programs. Meanwhile, 

although OCS-IS officers serve through 6 years at the 

highest rates, their retention falls precipitously after 

10 years of commissioned service since they become 

retirement eligible due to their years of prior enlisted 

service. Since the Army’s biggest officer shortages fall 

in the senior captain and major ranks, OCS-EO and 

OCS-IS accessions do little to address those shortages 

and instead intensify retention problems at exactly the 

worst points in the officer career model. 
14

Additionally, the Army’s practice of over-accessing 

officers to compensate for low retention puts additional 

downward pressure on retention. As shown by the 

dots in Figure 7 (reading right to left), accessions 

were relatively constant in the 1990s, but have 

climbed steadily since 2000.9

 As a result, the Army has 

significantly more company grade officers than it has 

structure to employ them. This creates a lengthy queue 

for platoon leader positions and forces the Army to 

reduce the amount of time that an officer spends in key 

and developmental positions. Not surprisingly, this 

leads to decreased satisfaction and impairs the Army’s 

ability to retain talent. 

There is little doubt that recent changes in accessions 

policy have placed the long-term viability of the 

Officer Corps at risk. Ironically, and as we pointed out 

in the initial monograph in this series, accessioning is 

Figure 7. Authorized Strength and Inventory (with 

Trainees, Transients, Holdees and Students) for 

Army Competitive Category Officers.
15

the only component of the officer career model where 

the Army can achieve a net gain in overall talent. In 

all other functions, talent is a zero-sum game—if you 

employ talent in one area, it is unavailable elsewhere 

(for example, officers in the Generating Force are 

unavailable to the Operating Force). By committing the 

right talent and resources to its officer accessions effort, 

however, the Army can increase overall talent levels 

without harming itself elsewhere. In the long run, this 

is a positive sum game, one where the capabilities of 

the Officer Corps rise due to human capital acquired 

from outside. Achieving strategic-level outcomes of 

this kind requires an accessions strategy grounded in 

sound theory. 

THEORETICAL CONSIDERATIONS

Competing with colleges, industry, and corporate 

America for talent requires an appreciation of key 

market principles. First, the Army must understand 

the market place in which it competes. Second, it must 

understand the ways in which individuals respond to 

information in order to improve communication with 

the prime market of potential officers. 

Competing in the Market for Talent.

As we explained in our monograph on retaining 

officers, choice theory predicts that individuals will 

join the Army if the value of serving as an Army officer 

outweighs their best alternative option (opportunity 

cost). Aggregating across all potential prospects 

produces an S-shaped officer labor supply curve, 

graphically depicted in Figure 8. 
16

For the purposes of this discussion, the term 

“compensation” includes all wages and benefits (salary, 

medical care, insurance, tax benefits, job satisfaction, retirement plan, educational opportunities, 

etc.). The relatively challenging nature of commissioned service provides the theoretical basis for 

the curve. To understand why, consider that for a 

modest compensation rate (denoted by C1), the Army 

can expect to have a quantity of officer prospects 

(Q1) willing to serve. These are individuals whose 

positive expectations of military service outweigh the 

alternatives available to them in the civilian sector 

at this compensation level. If the Army needs more 

officers, (say Q2), it must raise compensation from C1 

to C2. This increase entices more individuals to join 

because the added compensation again outweighs their 

opportunity cost in the civilian sector. In this example, 

there is a relatively large increase in the quantity of 

officers for a modest increase in compensation.

Figure 8. S-Shaped Officer Supply Curve.
17

The physical demands and risks associated with 

Army service means that at some point the pool of 

willing prospects will begin to dwindle. To increase 

the quantity of officers again (this time from Q2 to 

Q3) now requires a significantly larger increase in 

compensation (from C2 to C3). This is because people in 

this prospect segment have differing expectations and 

opportunity costs than those who have already opted 

to serve. They may find military service more onerous 

than those opting in at a lower compensation point or 

their talents may command higher compensation in 

the civilian marketplace. 

The thick vertical part of the S-shaped curve 

represents the characteristics and condition of 

available officer labor. It shifts in and out in response 

to both external shocks (war, economic crisis) and the 

archetype of each military age generation. For example, 

the September 11, 2001 (9/11) attacks or declining 

economic conditions shift the vertical part of the curve 

to the right, making it easier for the Army to access 

officers. Conversely, high wartime casualties, public 

or political opposition to war, or improving economic 

conditions can shift the vertical portion back to the left, 

making it more difficult to access officers. 

Viewing the challenge in this way reveals an 

important aspect of the officer accessions process—

that in an all-volunteer force, the prospect pool 

ultimately determines the scope and tempo of Army 

talent accessions. Therefore, understanding the shocks 

that shift the supply curve and how each militaryage generation will respond to them is central to 

understanding the talent market in which the Army 

competes for officers.

The generation comprising the vast majority of 

current and future new officers is the “Millennial 
18

Generation,” also referred to as “Echo Boomers” or 

“Generation Y.” Like every generation, it has its own 

persona. Roughly speaking, the Millennial Generation 

consists of 78 million Americans born between 1982 

and 2001, three times the size of “Generation X” and 

the largest American generation since the “Baby 

Boomers.” With its youngest members currently just 9 

years of age, the Millennial Generation will dominate 

new officer accessions for the next decade. While entire 

papers have been devoted to them, there are three 

characteristics of “Millennials” worth noting here: 

(1) they are the most ethnically diverse generation to 

date; (2) they are extremely independent because of 

day care, single parents, latchkey parenting, and the 

technological revolution that bounds their coming of 

age; and (3) they feel empowered—thanks to supportive “helicopter” parents, they have both a sense of 

security and significant optimism about the future.10

Additionally, of the generational archetypes that 

seem to cycle through each epoch in a somewhat 

predictable pattern, the Millennials are a “Hero” 

generation, coming of age in a period of global 

unraveling and crisis (persistent conflict and economic 

shocks) not unlike that of the “Greatest Generation” 

which reached adulthood during the Great Depression 

and World War II. In common with that generation, 

they are more conventional in outlook than those (Gen 

X) who preceded them, and they are institutionally 

driven team players with a profound trust in authority.11 In sum, their size, character, beliefs, behavior, 

and location in history make Millennials an excellent 

officer prospect population for the Army, provided the 

Army tailors its approach to attract them accordingly. 
19

Communicating with Prospects: Understanding 

Behavioral Economics. 

Classical economic theory assumes that there is perfect information on both sides of a market transaction 

and that people behave rationally when confronted 

with choices based on information. By rational, we 

mean making decisions that improve their welfare 

over time. In reality, however, these assumptions 

rarely hold, resulting in market failures. Seldom do 

people have perfect information about serving as an 

Army officer, and even less often does the Army have 

perfect information about applicants. As humans, we 

are prone to systemic decisionmaking errors even 

when our information is relatively accurate. Army 

marketing efforts must account for these deviations 

since they are likely to play an important role in the 

market for new officer talent. 

Notwithstanding the wealth of information 

available to individuals today, they will generally 

turn to the most immediate source to reach decisions, 

whether or not it is the most accurate source. Studies 

have shown, for example, that the first person who 

orders at a restaurant often shapes the choices of 

others at the table. Once their selection is announced, 

others rapidly follow suit and menus around the 

table are closed, even though they contain a wealth of 

information that would be useful to making a choice. 

Relying upon an acquaintance rather than the menu is 

faster and more convenient, even if less accurate.

For the current market of potential officer prospects 

(roughly 17-24 years old), being born and raised in 

the Information Age has shaped their view of the 

military. They have much less direct exposure to the 

military than previous generations of young people, 
20

most of whom had vicarious contact with millions of 

World War II or Cold War-era service veterans. In the 

absence of such a direct connection, they must rely 

on popular culture, movies, television, or the internet 

for information regarding Army officer service. If the 

Army fails to provide accurate and easily assimilated 

information about officership, prospect impressions 

may be unduly shaped by the wealth of incomplete, 

dated, or skewed information available from thousands 

of media sources.

For those prospects with a distinct proclivity 

towards military service, perceptions of each service 

component frame their decisionmaking as well (see 

Figure 9).

Figure 9. Public Perceptions by Branch of Service.

Survey data from polling regarding the four service 

components shows that public perceptions segment 

along two continuums: “brain to brawn” and “elite to 

ordinary.”12 Regardless of whether these perceptions 

are accurate or not, young Americans view the Army 
21

as more ordinary than elite and more physical than 

intellectual. Such perceptions reinforce the theory of 

an S-shaped labor supply curve discussed earlier, and 

they do not posture the Army well to compete with the 

other military services for talent. 

Getting talented people interested in the Army and 

overcoming its negative image relative to the other 

services requires innovative marketing. Generations 

coming of age in a time of economic hardship, fascism, 

global communism, conscription, and significant 

exposure to veterans were more readily interested in 

service as an Army officer. Such conditions do not exist 

today, however, and framing a marketing campaign 

around such conditions would not influence the 

current Millennial Generation of prospective officers. 

These young men and women are consumers of data, 

live on the internet, play virtual games, develop virtual 

networks, and have lived most of their lives in relative 

economic prosperity. Successfully framing the Army 

for them requires a different approach. (See Figure 10.)

Figure 10. Approaching the Army as a Profession.
22

Figure 10 contrasts the ways in which different 

generations may approach the Army as a profession. 

Marketing strategies that appeal to Millennials are 

likely to follow the gradual pathway depicted to the 

right. Framing the Army so that it is seen as engaging, 

informative, socially based, and interactive aligns well 

with the sensibilities of the current generation. Beyond 

information failures, the limits of human rationality are 

likely to further narrow markets for new officer talent. 

While we fancy ourselves to be modern thinkers who 

form beliefs and reach decisions rationally, behavioral 

economists argue that we remain cognitively connected 

to the earliest humans, whose primary concern was 

survival.13 This necessitated rapid decisionmaking 

based upon heuristics (cognitive shortcuts that reduce 

complexity and speed decisionmaking) connected with 

finding the next meal or avoiding becoming a meal. 

Like our ancestors, modern humans genetically 

encode information connected to existential and highly 

vivid events so it is readily available for recall and 

decisionmaking. A primitive tribe observing a tiger for 

the first time may not have known what to make of 

it. If a member was then eaten by the tiger, it likely 

engendered a very vivid memory. As a result, the next 

time a tribe member happened across a large, fourlegged striped animal, an immediate flight response 

probably ensued, even if the animal was a harmless 

zebra—the more vivid the initial existential experience, 

the more dramatic the response. The gist of seeing 

such an animal was that tigers are life threatening, and 

that response was immediately projected to other large 

striped creatures, even if that is somewhat irrational. 

This is one reason that advertisers employ vivid 

information, to facilitate the encoding and recall of 

product attributes.14
23

While these heuristics may benefit some products, 

they create challenges for Army marketing efforts. 

Popular culture provides young adults with a large 

volume of increasingly vivid information. This 

information often takes the form of movies such as 

Tiger Land or Platoon that dramatize certain unflattering 

perspectives on service during the Vietnam draft era. 

Vivid information about the Army also abounds via 

YouTube, blogs, websites, and commercial video 

games. If that were not enough, technological progress 

in the form of 3D electronic commercial games 

and High Definition TV visually enhance the vivid 

depictions of combat. Most of this content is void of 

details regarding how the Army of today provides 

markedly improved quality of life, pay, benefits, 

and professional interactions as compared to what is 

depicted in most war movies. Instead, the gist of Army 

service vividly portrayed by these media is that it 

entails immediate and constant personal danger, 

exposure to the elements, and a dehumanizing 

hierarchy. This information can systemically shape 

youth impressions, overshadowing Army marketing 

in reach and volume.

 Further complicating the situation is another type 

of decisionmaking irrationality called confirmation bias. 

Confirmation bias causes people to systemically seek 

or accept evidence confirming their existing beliefs. 

Information that does not conform to existing beliefs 

is subject to greater examination than evidence that fits 

with existing beliefs.15 Incomplete vivid information 

on the military that is rampant in popular culture can 

shape human estimates regarding the likelihood of 

events. People often treat fictional information that 

they have seen in a movie as if it could have happened.16

Because Army efforts to recruit potential officers do 
24

not go into full swing until young adults reach age 17, 

there is significant time for popular culture to shape 

beliefs and perceptions of military service. 

Summarizing the main theoretical considerations 

with regard to competing for officer talent, the 

Army must understand the marketplace, which is 

shaped by generational effects, market failures, and 

innumerable other shocks that affect an individual’s 

proclivity to service. This understanding also requires 

an appreciation for individual decisionmaking behavior—the role of information framing, the impact 

of vivid images of military service, and the difficulty 

of overcoming the confirmation bias engendered by 

misrepresentations of the Army by pop culture. A first 

step in addressing these theoretical considerations is to 

target marketing efforts at populations with increased 

likelihoods of accessing the right talent.

FISHING FOR TALENT IN THE RIGHT PONDS

While there are a few big fish in every pond, it is 

a fact of life that some ponds have greater numbers 

of big fish. Whether we are talking about actual fish 

or talented people, it is no accident that some ponds 

routinely produce bigger fish. Take eastern Ohio or 

Texas, for example. Both are famous for producing 

top-notch collegiate football talent. Well-established 

junior programs feed well-resourced high school 

programs, which attract college scouts by the droves. 

Similar to eastern Ohio and Texas football, most toptier universities have justifiably powerful reputations 

for producing top-notch graduates. Harvard Business 

School (HBS) epitomizes this. Routinely rated as one 

of the top business schools, its tuition runs as high 

as $46,000 a year. Additional living expenses put the 
25

final cost for the 2-year program at over $150,000.17

This price tag does little to deter aspiring candidates 

from even modest backgrounds because corporate 

America compensates HBS graduates commensurate 

with this high cost. Why? It is simply because Harvard 

has the record and reputation for producing top 

notch graduates. American companies are in essence 

paying Harvard to screen, vet, and cull talent for them. 

Harvard provides a pond from which firms can, with a 

great degree of certainty, get the talent they need. 

Similarly, the Army must thoughtfully choose the 

ponds it fishes in and align resources accordingly. Take, 

for example the ponds of talent illustrated in Figure 11. 

There are 20 potential officers in each of the ponds, but 

the talent distribution in Pond A has a lower average 

and wider distribution of talent matches than Pond 

B. At all levels of talent match, there are more highpotential talent matches in Pond B than Pond A. Note 

too that there are three times as many potential officers 

with an above average match in Pond B than there are 

for the same talent levels in Pond A. The chances of 

accessing the right talent match for the Army is clearly 

higher in Pond B than Pond A.

Once the Army decides the size and type of fish it 

wants to catch, and which ponds it wants to frequent, it 

must select the right “lure.” That is the role of marketing. The five primary sources of commission—West 

Point, ROTC Scholarship, ROTC Nonscholarship, 

OCS-IS, and OCS-EO—along with the leadership 

experiences of being an Army officer, provide the 

Army with a wide range of marketing lures, allowing 

it to fish in many different ponds. 
26

Figure 11. Fishing in the Right Pond.

For example, West Point and ROTC scholarships 

give the Army the ability to compete for the best talent 

in the country. Each year, these programs attract more 

than 25,000 college-bound applicants with at least 

some service proclivity. They provide a method for 

receiving a top-notch education, a guaranteed postcollege job, and a tremendous amount of leadership 

experience at a relatively young age. For the Army, 

West Point provides accessions flexibility, as the 

institution completely controls the curriculum and 

program of instruction for its graduates. With the 

ROTC Scholarship program, the Army has some 

ability (although diminished relative to West Point) to 

affect the instruction of its graduates, contingent upon 

the schools it positions itself in, and the disciplines 

found at each. 

In contrast, ROTC Nonscholarship and OCS-IS 

are designed to attract those whose overriding desire 
27

is to serve as an officer. These programs are likely to 

appeal to those who weight their military career goals 

more heavily than their educational aspirations. For 

the Army, they provide a reduced level of flexibility 

to shape these commissions, as the Army cannot 

direct programs or levels of study. With OCS-EO, the 

Army can select candidates based on the completed 

discipline of study, but can do little to influence the 

pool of applicants. Furthermore, the OCS-EO missions 

occur monthly. Therefore, the Army can only select 

from among applicants who are available in any given 

month. If the mission is for 100 OCS-EO officers in a 

month, the Army must find 100 officers even in the 

middle of March, when few college graduates will 

have become available from a recent graduation. In 

other words, more talent is apt to be available in the 

summer months or shortly after the first of each year 

as a result of the timing of most college graduations. 

The varying degree to which each applicant desires 

education and each applicant desires to serve as an 

Army officer requires a targeted marketing effort. A 

broad-based marketing strategy that touts the Army’s 

many great educational opportunities may discourage 

prospects who are not as interested in education as 

they are in serving as officers. Likewise, emphasizing 

the military aspects of commissioned service may 

dissuade applicants with a focus on education from 

applying. Therefore, the Army must give considerable 

care to understanding each pond that it fishes in and 

using the correct marketing lure. In the next section, 

we highlight several marketing innovations that take 

account of the theoretical construct we provide above. 

Some are well-developed programs and others are in 

their infancy. 
28

MARKETING INNOVATIONS

Spanning Segmented Markets.

In 2008, ROTC returned to a centralized scholarship 

selection. This policy change appreciates the framing 

preferences of the current generation, since they are 

the ones making the final decision about serving 

as an officer. It also gives ROTC greater flexibility 

in ensuring that high-potential talent does not fall 

completely out of ROTC simply because one school 

declined acceptance to the individual. Furthermore, it 

provides information to the Army on where applicants 

desire to attend school. Armed with such information, 

the Army can begin to realign resources against the 

demands of its applicants instead of forcing applicants 

to adjust to the inertia of the Army bureaucracy. 

Building on the idea of a centralized scholarship 

application, many colleges have entered into centralized applications for admission. Common applications 

make it easier for the applicant to apply to multiple 

schools with very little additional effort. The cost to 

the applicant for applying to an additional school is 

little more than the checking of a box. West Point has 

begun to explore the possibility of participating in a 

centralized application program such as the Common 

Application. Benefits include a great deal of information 

regarding the other educational programs West Point 

applicants are considering. Through participation in a 

common application program, West Point could not 

only leaven its own pool of applicants, but through 

some innovative cross marketing efforts that reframe 

the Army as a viable career, it could leaven the pool 

of applicants for all sources of commission, even those 

that are not necessarily tied to a specific school. 
29

A recent pilot program to cross market applicants 

from West Point to ROTC shows significant promise. 

Each year, West Point receives more than 10,000 

applicants for some 1,300 open seats. Yet of the more 

than 8,000 surplus applicants, historically fewer than 

100 would end up participating in ROTC. Beginning in 

2008, West Point and ROTC began a cross marketing 

program that resulted in more than 400 of these surplus 

West Point applicants accepting ROTC scholarships.

The program was based on several of the theoretical 

principles outlined above. Before notifying a West Point 

applicant that he or she did not receive admission, an 

ROTC selection board reviewed the files and selected 

roughly 1,000 of the applicants to receive an offer of 

an ROTC scholarship. Rather than receiving a letter 

of notification that an individual was not accepted to 

West Point, he received a phone call from an officer 

letting him know that while he did not get accepted 

at West Point and although he had not applied for 

an ROTC scholarship, the Army really valued his 

application and was prepared to offer him a full ROTC 

scholarship at any ROTC program in the country. In 

essence, the Army reframed the opportunity to serve 

in the Army, but through a different source. The results 

are promising, as during the past 2 years, more than 

400 of the 1,000 scholarship offers were accepted—and 

none of these applicants had previously applied to 

ROTC.

Consistent with our theoretical construct, this 

program was customer focused, targeted towards 

Millennial considerations, and information driven. 

The applicant was not required to fill out duplicate 

information, since West Point already had the 

information that ROTC needed to make a scholarship 

decision. Each applicant also received a phone call 
30

from an Army officer. This personal contact powerfully 

communicated the value of each young person to the 

Army. 

A final component of the program was targeted 

marketing. By leveraging West Point’s brand equity, 

which attracts the nation’s top collegiate prospects, 

the Army gained increased access to talent at virtually 

no cost. This Academy’s brand equity is substantial 

because it has produced many of the nation’s famous 

civil and military leaders. It also derives strength from 

the fact that it can be seen, touched, and experienced. 

In essence, West Point and its beautiful collegiate 

setting serves as a “storefront” for the Officer Corps, 

an impressive destination that completely reframes 

public perceptions of the Army as merely ordinary, 

average, physical, or a career of last resort. 

In particular, West Point’s standing as a premier 

institution of higher learning allows it to reach a much 

younger audience than those who are applying to 

colleges. Through robust NCAA-affiliated summer 

sports camps, scouting jamborees, and tourism, West 

Point allows the Army to present young people with an 

engaging message about officership before confirmation bias sets in. This highlights an important consideration. Rather than marketing officership in general, 

which blurs the message of each commissioning source, 

the Army may derive greater benefit by leveraging 

the brand equity of its better known commissioning 

sources and then cross marketing excess applicants to 

its other programs.18

Targeted Marketing.

The “America’s Army” game is a prime example of 

a program that accounts for imperfect information and 

irrationality by adapting new media and technology 
31

to communicate Army opportunities to young adults. 

Launched in 2002, this multiplayer online video 

game places the Army squarely inside youth popular 

culture. It allows players to test-drive the Army in a 

virtual environment and gain volumes of accurate 

information at no cost. Designed to account for key 

decisionmaking heuristics and biases likely to afflict 

the market for new Army talent, the game provides 

a platform for the Army to communicate with its 

prime market of potential applicants. “America’s 

Army” exposes users to the organizational values, 

opportunities, and requirements of military service 

with sufficient vividness to separate the gist of serving 

in today’s Army from the gist of service conveyed 

by the media or Hollywood. It embodies teamwork 

and draws upon realistic mission scenarios, teaching 

young adults lessons about Army culture within an 

engaging pop culture format that resonates with them. 

Consistent with the approach outlined in Figure 10, 

it is engaging, informative, social, and interactive. To 

date, more than 11 million registered users of the game 

have spent over 250 million hours virtually exploring 

the Army, all at a cost that is 10 to 40 times cheaper per 

person-hour of mindshare than traditional media. 

Building on the “America’s Army” game platform, 

the Virtual Army Experience (VAE) provides an even 

more tangible and vivid Army sampling opportunity. 

Housed within a 10,000 square foot dome, this touring experience combines virtual world technology 

with functional replicas of Army materiel. It also 

features actual Soldiers who have served in the war 

on terrorism. After receiving an operations order, 

participants work as members of a team within virtual 

scenarios to achieve mission objectives linked to key 

organizational ethos and experiences. As a result, the 
32

VAE develops high propensity recruiting leads for the 

Army at a quarter the cost of traditional efforts. These 

leads are 10 times more likely to serve than those 

gained via legacy marketing events. Again, the VAE 

was designed with the “stair-step” concept at Figure 

10 in mind.

Taking this concept even further, the Army 

Experience Center (AEC) draws upon many VAE 

features, but rather than traveling, the experience 

is permanently located in an upscale Philadelphia 

shopping mall. Covering more than 10,000 square feet, 

the AEC provides a venue for teens to socialize, play 

video games, drive Army simulators, learn about the 

benefits of an Army career, and talk with peers who 

may also be thinking about a military career. Replacing 

legacy recruiting stations in care worn strip malls, this 

engaging experience is instead located where prime 

prospects actually spend a significant amount of 

their time. Communicating with young people about 

the value and importance of serving the nation as an 

Army officer must begin early to confront the biases 

and heuristics associated with accurate and vivid 

information, inappropriate framing, and confirmation 

bias. 

BUILDING FLEXIBILITY INTO THE 

ACCESSIONS PROCESS

With college serving as one of its key screening, 

vetting, and culling mechanisms, the Army must 

ensure its accessions strategy accounts for the significant time lags between accessions decisions and 

outcomes. For example, ROTC’s decision to return to 

a centralized scholarship offering will not produce 

tangible results for at least 4 more years. Over this 
33

period of time, other policy decisions, economic 

shocks, and generational shifts can affect the outcomes 

intended by going back to a centralized scholarship 

offering. 

These affects are often amplified by the inconsistent 

alignment of resources with time. For example, the 

juxtaposition of ROTC’s 4-year officer production 

timeline with the Army’s annual funding priorities can 

create a whipsaw action, undoing thoughtful policy 

decisions made a few years ago if funds are tight in the 

current year. This is problematic because scholarships 

offered today have little value if the Army cannot 

fund them until a student’s completion of his or her 

degree program years later. A related inconsistency 

is the occasional effort to make “year-end” money 

available to ROTC, of limited utility to a program 

whose scholarship dollars are tied to collegiate billing 

schedules rather than federal budget cycles. 

Another challenge is the number of officers that can 

be produced by West Point and the ROTC scholarship 

program, neither of which can rapidly increase yearover-year officer production without dramatically 

lowering the rigor of their screening, vetting, and 

culling. As a result, during recent and unanticipated 

increases in new officer requirements, the Army 

seemingly had few quick-turn options other than 

OCS. If, however, it had been forward looking enough 

to maintain ROTC resourcing at levels producing an 

adequate number of talented Reserve Component 

officers, the Army could have mobilized those officers 

to meet short-term spikes in active service demand. 

It could have then ramped up ROTC and West Point 

to meet increased long-term demand, while OCS 

production remained at previous levels.

Based upon the “average cost per commission” 
34

chart shown at Figure 4, some may argue that OCS 

expansion is the most cost effective officer accessions 

option available to the Army. However, the question 

of growing accessions from existing programs is not 

an average cost question, but a marginal cost one. 

It is the cost of producing one additional officer 

given that the existing commissioning programs are 

already in operation. When comparing marginal costs 

across these programs, a completely different picture 

emerges. West Point is actually the least expensive 

method of commissioning one more officer. The costs 

invert because fixed costs are already covered. Once 

the Army built West Point and resourced it with staff 

and faculty, the only additional costs to producing 

another lieutenant at the margin are cadet pay and 

food. As noted in Figure 12, the marginal cost of an 

ROTC scholarship officer depends on the attributes of 

the school attended.19 Meanwhile, the marginal cost of 

increased OCS-IS is high because of the replacement 

costs necessitated by poaching a talented enlisted 

Soldier or NCO from the ranks. 

Figure 12. Marginal Cost of a Commission by 

Source.

Colleges

Colleges

Colleges
35

Building from this marginal cost analysis, there are 

several ways the Army could exploit excess capacity 

in its more rigorous screening, vetting, and culling 

commissioning sources. For example, expanding 

the U.S. Military Academy Preparatory School 

(USMAPS) could help mitigate the worst effects of 

sudden, unanticipated increases in Army officer 

demand. Currently, USMAPS exists only to provide 

incoming cadets to West Point. Expanding its output 

to send qualified USMAPS graduates into other officer 

accessions programs could quickly help fill shortfalls 

in new officer requirements. Another initiative could 

be a “West Point without Walls” program, which 

would have each of its 4,400 cadets spend a semester 

outside of the Academy, perhaps studying abroad to 

receive cultural immersion benefits. Alternatively, 

they could spend a semester at Army ROTC host 

universities, broadening the experience of cadets 

from both commissioning sources and creating 

powerful peer relationships that would be useful after 

commissioning. By leveraging the fixed capital and 

infrastructure of other institutions in this way, the 

Army could grow West Point’s enrollment by perhaps 

500 cadets, all without a corresponding increase in 

its own fixed capital costs. These additional cadets 

would be subjected to West Point’s rigorous screening, 

vetting, and culling mechanisms, expanding its output 

by up to 125 officers each year without compromising 

commissioning standards. The costs of such an 

initiative would be relatively small—just the tuition 

and travel expenses of those cadets studying at other 

institutions. 
36

CONCLUSION

The U.S. Army requires talented officers at all 

levels—it is integral to American national security 

strategy. Unlike other large enterprises, however, the 

Army cannot buy talent from other firms to fill its 

officer gaps. The Officer Corps embodies a unique 

profession whose core warfighting abilities and culture 

takes years to develop and cannot be found elsewhere. 

This limits lateral entry and means that the Army 

must live tomorrow with the officer talent it brings in 

today. Each annual cohort of new lieutenants therefore 

represents far more than the Army’s latest crop of 

junior leaders. They are the feedstock for its future 

field grade and general officers. As a group, they must 

possess the depth and breadth of talent needed not just 

to lead platoon-sized formations, but to meet future 

operational and strategic leadership demands as well. 

Because the Army must compete in the American 

labor market for talent, officer accessions are a dynamic 

and ever-changing endeavor. To succeed, the Army 

must understand market conditions, continuously 

refine its communications with prospective talent, 

and shape proclivities to a career of officer service, 

all the while adjusting to market shocks and shifting 

generational preferences. 

In all other areas of officer talent management 

(employing, developing, and retaining), the Army 

faces a zero-sum game—if it employs talent in one 

area, it is unavailable elsewhere. By committing the 

right talent and resources to its officer accessions effort, 

however, the Army can increase overall talent levels 

without harming itself elsewhere. In the long run, this 

is a positive sum game, one where the capabilities of 

the Officer Corps rise due to human capital acquired 
37

from outside. Achieving strategic-level outcomes of 

this kind requires an accessions strategy grounded in 

sound theory. 

ENDNOTES

1. Janet C. Lowe, Warren Buffet Speaks: Wit and Wisdom from 

the World’s Greatest Investor, New York, NY: John Wiley and Sons, 

Inc., 1997, p. 87.

2. See David McCullough, The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of 

the Brooklyn Bridge, New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1972.

3. For a detailed discussion of the Officer Career Satisfaction 

Program, see Casey Wardynski, David S. Lyle, and Michael 

J. Colarusso, Towards a U.S. Army Officer Corps Strategy for 

Success: Retaining Talent, Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 

U.S. Army War College, January 2010, available from www.

strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/display.cfm?pubid=965.

4. Source: Index of Child Well-Being Project, Durham, NC: 

Duke University, Foundation for Child Development, 2004.

5. West Point develops cadets across six domains: academic, 

military, physical, social, ethical, and spiritual.

6. The methodology and data used to calculate the average 

cost to commission can be found in Majors Jette and Yankovich, 

“Assessing the Quantitative and Qualitative Costs of Increasing 

U.S. Army Officer Accessions,” analysis undertaken for the 

Headquarters Department of the Army, June 2007. Jette and 

Yankovich examined reports from 2004-05 (which reflect 2003 

data) from the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command 

(TRADOC) and U.S. Army Recruiting Command (USAREC) 

(for OCS), the Cost of Graduate Report (for USMA) and a report 

provided by Cadet Command as required by the Department 

of Defense (DoD) Financial Management Regulation, Volume 

2A, Chapter 3. The USMA average cost is based on all costs 

attributable to education and training of Cadets (Operations and 

Maintenance, Army [OMA] and Manpower and Personnel, Army 

[MPA]) as well as the Cadet’s pay and stipend. The total cost does 
38

not account for maintenance of the post itself. ROTC average cost 

is based on OMA and military pay accounts (active and reserve) 

as well as OMA designated funds for scholarships. Costs incurred 

through state funded simultaneous membership program (SMP) 

and the Guaranteed Reserve Forces Duty (GRFD) program 

are not included in the total ROTC cost methodology. Initial 

calculations net out scholarship dollars to determine the average 

cost to a nonscholarship Cadet. Then, using published National 

Center for Education Statistics (NCES) tuition and room and 

board rates, scholarship costs are added by weighting the cohort 

according to ROTC scholarship enrollment levels (across most, 

very, moderate, minimally competitive and open-enrollment 

schools) for the year. Weighted scholarship costs are then added 

to the cost to commission a nonscholarship Cadet to determine 

average costs across the scholarship/nonscholarship population. 

OCS-IS costs are determined by both the costs to create an officer 

through the OCS system and the costs to screen that future 

officer (i.e., create a private E1 and develop a noncommissioned 

officer [NCO] up through OCS acceptance). These costs coincide 

with the replacement of that lost NCO to the Noncomissioned 

Officer Corps. In addition to the cost of OCS schooling and loan 

repayment/degree completion, these costs include recruiting, 

accession and Military Entrance Processing Station (MEPS) 

operations, initial issue, Basic/Advanced Individual/One Station 

Unit Training costs, Permanent Change of Station (PCS) to first 

unit and the average enlistment bonus weighted across military 

occupational specialties. Based on historical continuation rates, 

the authors apply a factor of 1.5 to the cost to recruit, train, issue 

and access the Soldier based on historical attrition rates. OCSEO costs are the sum of OCS course costs, degree completion 

and loan repayment, as well as recruiting and accession costs, a 

reduced initial issue, basic training and the first PCS move. Based 

on historical attrition rates the authors apply a factor of 1.1 to the 

cost of recruiting, accessing, training and changing the Soldier’s 

station of assignment. 

7. Arthur T. Coumbe and Paul Kotakis, History of U.S. Army 

Cadet Command: The Second Ten Years, 1996-2006, Washington, DC: 

U.S. Government Printing Office, 2008, p. 42.

8. Ibid., p. 85.
39

9. Determining whether the Army over-accessed officers 

requires the passage of time. Accession targets are determined 

by models that account for historical retention and projected 

endstrength. Figure 7 provides evidence that the Army has been 

over accessing since Year Group 2000, as there are more officers 

than requirements, even after accounting for trainees, transients, 

holdees, and students (TTHS). 

10. “Generation Y: The Millennials: Ready or Not, Here They 

Come,” Information Paper, Cleveland, OH: NAS Recruitment 

Communications, 2006.

11. For a more complete discussion of generational differences, 

see Neil Howe and William Strauss, The Lifecourse Method, available 

from www.lifecourse.com/mi/method.html. For an examination of 

generational differences specific to the Army’s Officer Corps, see 

Leonard Wong, Generations Apart: Xers and Boomers in the Officer 

Corps, Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War 

College, 2000, available from www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.

mil/pubs/download.cfm?q=281.

12. “Army Segmentation and Target,” Unpublished briefing 

prepared for the U.S. Army, Nashville, TN: TargetScopeTM 

Segmentation, February 16, 2001.

13. Nobel Laureate Herbert Simon is credited with first 

explaining how people irrationally tend to be satisfied instead of 

maximizing utility. In 2002, Daniel Kahneman was awarded the 

Nobel Prize for integrating insights from psychological research 

into economic science with regards to human judgment and 

decisionmaking under uncertainty.

14. Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, “Judgment under 

Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases,” Science, Vol. 185, No. 4157, 

September 27, 1974, pp. 1127-1128. 

15. Eliezer Yudkowsky, “Cognitive Biases Potentially 

Affecting Judgment of Global Risks,” in Nick Bostrom and Milan 

Cirkovic, eds., Global Catastrophic Risks, forthcoming, pp. 8-9.

16. Ibid., p. 12.
40

17. HBS was ranked the best business school in 2009 by U.S. 

News and World Report.

18. Tracking surplus applicants to both West Point and ROTC 

may also be a viable source of talent for OCS-EO. A small pilot 

program attempted to contact individuals who had once applied 

to ROTC and West Point but never attended either. By timing their 

eventual graduation from college with a communication effort, 

the Army may be able to attract some of these individuals into the 

ranks of OCS-EO since they once demonstrated some interest in 

the military.

19. The methodology and data used to calculate the marginal 

cost to commission can be found in Jette and Yankovich. They 

examined reports from 2004-2005 (which reflect 2003 data) 

from TRADOC and USAREC (for OCS), the Cost of Graduate 

Report (for USMA) and a report provided by Cadet Command 

as required by the DoD Financial Management Regulation, 

Volume 2A, Chapter 3. Marginal cost is the cost of producing each 

additional Cadet. Depending on the scale of the Cadet mission 

increase, marginal cost calculations might, on the one hand, not 

require additional barracks space or instructors, and on the other 

may be large enough to require new infrastructure (buildings/

barracks) and instructors. We use the authors’ estimates for a 

small increase in additional accessions of less than 100 Cadets. 

To produce 100 additional Cadets through OCS IS/EO, factors 

of 1.5 and 1.1 respectively are used to account for attrition (see 

average calculations above). Based on historical rates, it would 

take 125 West Point Cadets to yield 100 officer graduates, and 

it would take 143 ROTC Cadets to yield 100 officer graduates. 

The latter two have an initial lag of 4 years to reach steady 

state when increasing mission numbers. The marginal cost to 

commission additional USMA graduates includes the increase in 

the Cadet pay and stipend determined by the Military Pay and 

Allowances (MPA)-Cadet account as well as the cost of attrition 

throughout the 4-year experience. Marginal cost to access a West 

Point officer also includes some O&M monies for a portion of 

barracks utilities, maintenance and training. The marginal cost 

to commission a nonscholarship ROTC Cadet is the cost of the 

Cadet stipend, attrition, and minimal training costs (O&M) such 

as transportation to Leadership Development and Assessment 

Costs (LDAC) (advanced camp Ft. Lewis) and local training. The 
41

ROTC scholarship Cadet’s marginal costs are weighted across the 

school types by adding the cost of tuition and room and board 

using NCES data. ROTC scholarship Cadets have the largest 

ratio of variable to fixed costs and the Army assumes the greatest 

inflation risk with these Cadets due to its exposure to tuition and 

fee increases. 

The marginal cost to commission an OCS-EO officer assumes 

that the marginal cost to recruit is $0. Therefore, the costs incurred 

for the additional mission includes accession costs, attrition, initial 

issue, enlistment bonus, tuition reimbursement/loan repayment, 

and O&M training dollars for the additional basic trainee and 

OCS candidate. In addition to these costs (less basic training), 

commissioning additional officers through OCS-IS requires that 

the Army bear the cost to replace the vacated NCO slot. Marginal 

cost calculations for OCS-IS include that “replacement cost.”