Another vote for private education

Well ok, civilian education. Thomas Ricks in today's Post (meme):

Want to trim the federal budget and improve the military at the same time? Shut down West Point, Annapolis and the Air Force Academy, and use some of the savings to expand ROTC scholarships.

After covering the U.S. military for nearly two decades, I've concluded that graduates of the service academies don't stand out compared to other officers. Yet producing them is more than twice as expensive as taking in graduates of civilian schools ($300,000 per West Point product vs. $130,000 for ROTC student). On top of the economic advantage, I've been told by some commanders that they prefer officers who come out of ROTC programs, because they tend to be better educated and less cynical about the military.

Update: Yglesias thinks it's worth investigating, and I agree.

UNRR disapproves, which is a fair opinion, but I don't see substantive reasons behind it.

Outside the Beltway notes the costs differences are worth exploring but that having fewer instructors with PhDs isn't a useful metric. He concludes with an appeal for diversity -- "Having everyone follow exactly the same path may simply not produce the range of viewpoints and experiences we need." -- which I find more persuasive.

Update II: QandO says Ricks doesn't know what he's talking about in comparing ROTC to the service academies.  This part is particularly interesting:

as I observed it, at company grade (the ranks 2LT, 1LT and CPT are considered “company grade” ranks), the West Point grad and the OCS grad were usually the best officers (and with obvious exceptions, I felt most of the OCS grads were a touch better than the WP guys) while the ROTC guys were playing catch-up. Around the 5 year mark, at the rank of CPT, everyone was pretty much even.

Again, these are my observations, but as we moved into the field grade ranks (the ranks MAJ, LTC and COL are “field grade” ranks), the ROTC and West Pointers began to pull away from the OCS grads. However, at both levels, West Pointers were right there among the best because they’d been taught and taught pretty well to function at both levels.