ROTC is the largest of the three major officer commissioning programs for DOD. The other two major commissioning officer sources include the military service academies and Officer Candidate Schools/Officer Training School. As shown in figure 1, in fiscal year 2012, the ROTC program produced nearly half of all the newly commissioned active duty officers from the three major commissioning sources. ROTC programs prepare college and university students to serve as officers in the military services. The program was established by the National Defense Act of 1916 to supplement the military academies in preparing selected students for commissioned military service and to provide officers for the reserve forces. The services organize their ROTC programs into administrative units and assign a command structure, including a commanding officer, to each unit. In addition to a commanding officer, each ROTC unit has additional staff assigned to the unit, including enlisted and officer personnel, and for Army and Navy, civilian personnel. Table 1 below provides specific information about military and civilian personnel assigned to ROTC units for each service. The ROTC units are spread across the country, as represented in figure 2. Most states have a unit from each service located within the state and all states have at least one unit located within the state. Each unit may support students at more than one school. Typically, in these cases, the unit’s command staff is assigned to the school that has been designated as the host, and students travel from their affiliate school to the host unit for their ROTC activities. The Navy maintains 12 ROTC units in which the command structure and ROTC activities are divided between more than one host school. Naval ROTC refers to these as consortium units. This typically happens no later than the junior year, prior to the service’s advanced ROTC training. regarding ROTC. The services’ headquarters determine the number of newly commissioned officers needed annually to support the services’ congressionally mandated end strength requirements for military personnel by considering beginning strength, losses, and transfers. They also provide guidance on the number of officers expected from each officer commissioning program, including ROTC. To meet the requirements set by service headquarters, the military services typically operate ROTC programs using a 5-year production cycle, beginning the year prior to school entry and culminating in the graduation year. ROTC’s relevance extends beyond its quantitative production capability. ROTC supports the concept of a citizen-soldier and the all-volunteer force with its potential to provide officers from a variety of backgrounds and experiences available within the student population on a college or university campus. ROTC also provides a method of military outreach and contact with the public. By statute, at least one ROTC unit must be established and maintained in each state if certain conditions are met. The military services’ ROTC programs each came within a few percentage points of meeting or exceeding the annual officer production goals that they established to meet their respective authorized end strengths. However, each service reported that various factors may affect their ability to meet these goals, and that they have faced challenges commissioning officers for certain occupational specialties. In addition, half of all ROTC units did not produce the minimum average annual production of officers over a 5-year period required by DOD to justify investment in an ROTC unit. In fiscal years 2008 through 2012, each service came within a few percentage points of meeting or exceeding its overall ROTC officer production goals for newly commissioned officers. The military services annually issue guidance that specifies goals for the number and types of officers that their respective ROTC programs need to produce to meet their current authorized end strength as well as future needs that are projected over a 5-year period. For the 5 years we reviewed, fiscal years 2008 through 2012, the Army’s ROTC program goal for newly commissioned officers ranged from 4,500 to 5,350; the Navy’s goal, which includes officers for the Marine Corps, ranged from 1,163 to 1,387; and the Air Force’s goal ranged from 1,788 to 1,940. The services generally met these overall production goals for newly commissioned officers. Specifically, as shown in table 2 below, the Army met at least 95 percent of its goal, the Navy met at least 91 percent of its goal, and the Air Force met at least 96 percent of its goal during this period. Furthermore, the Army and the Air Force each exceeded their production goals for 3 of the 5 years we studied. Table 2 shows the production goal, actual production, and the percent of the goal met by each service for fiscal years 2008 through 2012. Service officials told us that they manage ROTC enrollments, contract offers, and scholarship awards to help ensure that they reach but do not significantly exceed their officer production goals. In the event that an over- or underproduction of officers is anticipated, each service correspondingly adjusts the number of people they plan to admit into future classes at their respective Officer Candidate School or, in the case of the Air Force, Officer Training School. Neither OSD nor the services have established performance measures that provide a comprehensive understanding of the overall effectiveness and efficiency of ROTC programs. Specifically, current measures do not take into account a service’s investment in a particular ROTC unit, and are not clearly defined to help ensure that they are objectively applied. In addition, over the past decade, the services have conducted a total of 11 evaluations to identify units for consolidation or closure. However, the evaluations have largely occurred on an ad hoc basis and are narrowly focused on assessing the productivity of individual ROTC units, rather than the overall performance of the program. Furthermore, although the services’ evaluations of ROTC units yielded recommendations for consolidation or closures, no closures have occurred as a result. DOD’s management of ROTC programs is hampered by not having performance measures that provide a comprehensive understanding of the overall cost-effectiveness and efficiency of ROTC programs. Key attributes of successful performance measures include clearly defined, comprehensive measures that enable an organization to evaluate accomplishments, make decisions, and balance competing priorities. DOD’s instruction specifies five factors for the military services to consider before closing a unit, including, the (1) quality of the officers produced by the unit, (2) operations and maintenance cost of maintaining the unit, (3) numbers of officers produced to meet service commissioning goals from categories that are difficult to achieve, (4) number of officers produced by the unit, and (5) number and location of units in an area or state where the unit being considered for closure resides. However, several of these factors, which officials told us are the measures they currently use to assess the programs, are not clearly defined. Specifically, DOD’s instruction directs the services to consider the quality of officers produced by a unit that is being evaluated for closure. However, the instruction does not include guidance on how the services should define and assess quality, which could lead to the inconsistent application of the measure by the services. Another example is that DOD’s instruction directs the services to consider the geographic representation of ROTC units. However, the instruction does not describe how concentrated the ROTC presence in an area or state should be, which could lead the services to under- or over-emphasize the relative importance of an ROTC unit to a particular area. Furthermore, DOD’s instruction requires officer production from each unit to be adequate to justify DOD investment and generally requires ROTC units to produce a 5-year average of 15 officers annually to remain viable. However, DOD’s production requirement does not take into account a service’s investment in a particular ROTC unit because it does not account for cost-related factors, such as the differences in the cost of tuition for public and private colleges or for in-state and out-of-state students. Moreover, the tuition cost difference is not insignificant, with college tuition for some schools costing six times more than the annual average in-state tuition of about $7,100 for a 4-year college or university. Despite the significant variance in tuition, all ROTC units are subject to the same numerical production requirement regardless of the actual cost each service incurs at a particular college or university. Because such cost data are not consistently accounted for, it is not clear how the production requirement can be used to justify DOD’s investment. The absence of clearly defined measures also affects the objectivity of DOD’s unit closure consideration factors because it requires the services to subjectively determine how each factor should be defined and applied. Further, these determinations can change over time without explanation. For example, we reviewed the methodologies used by each service to identify units for potential closure and found that, in addition to the five factors to consider before closing a unit, two of the services incorporated additional factors into the closure consideration process. For example, in fiscal year 2012, the Navy included the U.S. News and World Report ranking of the schools associated with the units as 1 of 12 factors in its closure considerations, and the Air Force included “strategic partnerships” as an important consideration. However, neither service identified specifically how these factors correlate to the factors in DOD’s instruction, defined how these factors contribute to a service-specific need, or explained why these factors were added to the 2012 analysis. In comments on a draft of this report, Navy officials pointed out that the U.S. News and World report ranking correlates to the quality of applicants to the Navy Nuclear Propulsion Program, a specific Navy officer accession requirement. However it is not clear specifically how the Navy made that correlation, nor why the Navy added this ranking for its 2012 review. We recognize that the services need some flexibility to prioritize factors on the basis of their individual needs for newly commissioned officers, but inconsistent measurements limit the services’ ability to compare program progress, results, and efficiency over time.