Book Description

Scholarships are an important tool the Army uses to recruit and retain students in the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) program. Any scholarship program faces challenges because of the high and rising cost of college. In response to this challenge and limited Army budgets, Cadet Command has made a number of recent alterations in the scholarship program to try to sustain a sufficient number of scholarships to attract students in fulfillment of its mission to commission officers into the U.S. Army. This report analyzes those recent policy changes and their effect on students' acceptance of Army scholarships as well as the types of schools they choose to enroll in. This report has two purposes. First, it recommends a structure for evaluating scholarship programs. Our analysis suggests that the schools participating in the ROTC program fall into five categories: historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), ROTC military colleges, other public colleges, prestigious private colleges, and other private colleges. Each category of school has desirable characteristics for the Army, but each attracts a different type of student and has a different cost structure. The report examines several criteria that may be used to assess the value of these different types of programs and considers the factors that influence the costs the Army faces in attracting students at each type of school. The second purpose of this report is to explore reasonable options for structuring the scholarship program today. Based on an examination of student responses to past programs, the report offers four ways the Army could structure its scholarship program. The report illustrates the effect of each alternative program across the five categories of schools. Since the Army has not made definitive statements about the types of students or schools that it sees as desirable for ROTC, it is not possible to be more precise in recommending a scholarship program.