Then Vs Now

“This commitment to excellence must permeate everything we do. I will not compromise my decision to advocate winning in accordance with our values of duty, honor and country…. I have great concern being called a liar after more than 42 years of honorable service to our Nation and many years serving here at West Point.” … Read more

Being Smart Hurts Your Army Career

Score one for the skeptics. In our previous posts we’ve used aptitude testing as a proxy for performance and the gold standard of what West Point recruiting efforts ought to be focused on. As it turns out, military scores matter more for “succeeding” in today’s Army. But is that a good thing? Our opinion is … Read more

Class Year Data

The previous posts have been most edifying to put together, but we’ve been a bit short on time lately to build on them. There is additional analysis that can be done on activities (in particular, deeper dives into test and GPA by corps squad teams, analyzing the extent of test score advantages for various groups, … Read more

On Conduct Standards

Reminder: LTC Heffington’s letter  and  LTG Caslen’s letter Some of the charges that LTC Heffington made were around the standards for conduct at USMA, and specifically that the Corps: First and foremost, standards at West Point are nonexistent. They exist on paper, but nowhere else. The senior administration at West Point inexplicably refuses to enforce West … Read more

On Diversity as Strength

Reminder: LTC Heffington’s letter  and  Superintendent’s responses: The Academy leadership says, in response to LTC Heffington’s concerns about a degraded Academy, of the cadets: They are the most diverse group in the history of West Point and we are stronger for it. This is something of a non-sequitur to the issues of conduct and performance in … Read more