Military Training OR Education for Future Officers at Tertiary Level

Abstract

Military officers’ education (MOE) is intended towards transforming ordinary civilians into a distinct men and women of arms. Keeping up to the present social requirement, MOE institutions nowadays mirrors their civilian counterparts to produce academically trained military officers who can face the future challenge of the nation’s security interests into a broader regional and global context. This however created a well-established tension between the academia and the warrior-soldiers on the legitimacy and the significance of higher-level education among the future military personnel. In order to further understand this phenomenon, this phenomenography study adopts in-depth semi-structured interviews, the study had interviewed seven (n=7) Policy makers, twenty-four (n=24) teachers, lecturers and military trainers, and twenty-seven (n=29) cadets at two prominent MOE institution in Europe. Findings from the study suggest that there are two divergent and often conflicting discourses over the adoption of tertiary level education in the training of military officers. Moreover, at its current state, the combination between higher education and military training may had put the system under certain strain thus resulting in an overstuffed curriculum. The findings in this study could offer an alternative way of looking at the ever-preceding debate on the importance of training and education in the delivering future officers, but also on the military practice itself.