Air Force increases school slots for officers

  • Published
  • By Maj. John J. Thomas
  • Air Force Personnel Center Public Affairs
RANDOLPH AIR FORCE BASE, Texas (AFPN) --  New ideas about force development are already fixing a longtime frustration of many officers who carried the official “school candidate” label -- that they could not get a slot for in-residence professional military education even with a three-year window to attend.

This year the Air Force has told more than 750 majors they will be going to developmental assignments in-residence -- more than a 50-percent increase. As recently as three years ago, only about 480 slots existed for majors to attend in-residence intermediate-level programs. And that meant about 30 percent of those who had been dubbed “candidates” did not actually get to go to school.

"From now on, it looks like we're going to be able to send every officer who is school-selected during the promotion board. And that's only how it should have been all along," said Lt. Gen. Tex Brown, the service's top personnel officer and acting assistant vice chief of staff.

"Last week we got to give good news to more than 250 additional officers than in previous years,” he said. “And that's good news for the Air Force as a whole.

"What got the pig through the python and allowed us to permanently clear this backlog was that so many great folks have worked so hard at implementing the secretary (of the Air Force)'s vision of creating more slots, more school opportunities," Brown said.

The reason this is all possible, officials say, is that the Air Force has re-defined what it means to send someone to developmental education. It used to be Air Command and Staff College at Maxwell Air Force Base's Air University was the hallmark of intermediate training. Other services' schools, plus a few fellowships here and there added to the opportunities, but ACSC was the place the service looked to send most of its most promising majors.

"Now we've come to realize that the best developmental education for someone may well be to go for an advanced academic degree at (Air Force Institute of Technology) or Naval Post Graduate School and that one size doesn't fit all," the general said. "The force-development concept is allowing us to build the framework we need to give us that flexibility, and then to leverage our officers' education."

Officials say soon, under force development, each officer will be considered for developmental assignments at several phases in his or her career, based on performance, rank, years in service and the needs of their career fields and the Air Force. (Courtesy of Air Force Personnel Center News Service)