Staff college Staff colleges ( also command and staff colleges and war colleges ) train military officer s in the administrative , staff and policy aspects of their profession . It is usual for such training to occur at several levels in a career . For example , an officer may be sent to various staff courses : as a captain they may be sent to a single service command and staff school to prepare for company command and equivalent staff posts ; as a major to a single or joint service college to prepare for battalion command and equivalent staff posts ; and as a colonel or brigadier to a higher staff college to prepare for brigade and division command and equivalent postings . The success of Staff Colleges spawned , in the mid - twentieth century , a civilian imitation in what are called administrative staff college s . These institutions apply some of the principles of the education of the military colleges to the executive development of managers from both the public and private sectors of the economy . The first and best - known administrative staff college was established in Britain at Greenlands near Henley , Oxfordshire and is now renamed Henley Management College . History . The first modern staff college was that of Prussia . Prussian advanced officer education began under the reign of Fredrick the Great . The Seven Years War demonstrated the inadequacy of the education that Generals had at that time , but it was not until 1801 that staff training in a modern sense began when Gerhard von Scharnhorst became the director of the " Militarakademie " . The Prussian defeats at the hand of Napoleon I led to the creation of the " Allgemeine Kriegsschule " ( General War Academy ) with a nine month programme covering mathematics , tactics , strategy , staff work , weapons science , military geography , languages , physics , chemistry and administration . The German staff courses have been used as a basic templates for other staff courses around the world . Staff Course formats . Nations have taken a wide variety of approaches to the form , curriculum and status of staff colleges , but have much in common with the Prussian courses of the early 19th Century . Some courses act as filters for promotion or entry into a specialist staff corps . The length of courses varies widely , from three months to three years , with some having entrance and / or exit examinations . The more senior the course , the more likely that it will include strategic , political and joint aspects , with junior courses often focusing on single service and tactical military aspects of warfare . Idiom . Certain terms of art or idiom have developed in staff colleges over time , and then been used in wider college or university settings and everyday usage , including : Staff colleges . The following is an incomplete list of staff colleges , by continent by country : Air Force Army Navy Marines Joint Europe . All these schools are seated in the école militaire in Paris . The Australian Defence College ( ADC ) was officially opened in 1999 in Canberra . It is a Joint organisation , and comprises : Oceania . Prior to the establishment of the Australian Command and Staff College , middle management officer Command and Staff training was conducted at separate single Service staff colleges :