Bruce Fleming in Salon:
It’s all smoke and mirrors run for the benefit not of the civilians who pay for it but the military brass, whose vanity projects these institutions are, and who hook each other up once out. Remember that this is the military, not academia or a free market of ideas. Everything you hear about the service academies comes from the CO in the front office, where the weather is always sunny. Administrators at USNA have all made their careers from being graduates (all superintendents have been USNA graduates and most of the higher administrators)—it gave them a free education and employment, after all, and a network afterward. The military students (their rank is “midshipman,” which we hear is about to become gender-neutral) cannot legally talk back, or take exception in public. The fox says the henhouse is doing fine; the hens can’t even cluck. It’s a fabulous system to keep those tax dollars rolling in. Proof, please.
More here.
