Army ROTC ranks grow, promise more 2nd lieutenants

NORTHFIELD, Vt. - Burgeoning ranks of Army ROTC students are filling college classrooms around the nation this fall as the Army seeks to beef up its officer corps with its generous scholarship program that pays the college tuition of students who are commissioned as 2nd lieutenants when they graduate.

At the hillside campus of Norwich University, the nation’s oldest private military college, more than three times as many Army ROTC students are enrolled this year over last. Most of the nation’s 273 colleges and universities with ROTC programs report similar increases as the Army grows its officer corps.

“The Army is a growth industry,” said Col. Stephen Carney, head of the ROTC detachment at Norwich. “You would think OK, it’s enlisted soldiers and (noncommissioned officers) that really make the Army run, but we need officers, too.”

U.S. Army Cadet Command, which provides most of the Army’s second lieutenants through ROTC, is being asked to produce more 2nd lieutenants, said spokesman Paul Kotakis. In 2001 the requirement was 3,900 new officers. In 2006 the number went up to 4,500. Next spring the number will be 5,100 and by 2011 5,350.

The increase in the past decade has been more than sevenfold: In the 1999-2000 school year the Army offered 430 ROTC scholarships. Last year the figure was 3,179. It’s all part of the accelerated expansion of the Army approved in 2007, according to the U.S. Army Manpower and Reserve Affairs office in Washington.

The Army is short about 3,000 majors and captains, said Col. Paul Aswell, chief of the Army’s Officer Division, the officers needed to staff the Army’s brigade combat teams. Producing them can take years.

“You want officers (who) are experienced, (who) understand what they’re doing professionally,” Aswell said. “There’s no way to produce them except by bringing them in as lieutenants.”

The total of 87 ROTC students who enrolled at Norwich last month was up 60 over the number who enrolled in the military arm of the Northfield college in 2008.

At Texas A&M, the largest of the nation’s six senior military colleges, Army ROTC scholarships jumped from 35 in the class that entered two years ago to 115 last year, although the figure is expected to be about 70 this year, said retired Col. Jake Betty, the chief of staff in the office of the commandant in College Station, Texas.

North Georgia State College and University, another of the senior military colleges, awarded 61 scholarships this year, up from about a dozen five years ago, said spokesman Kate Maine.

And it’s not just at typical military colleges. Ivy League Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., had five ROTC scholarship students last year, said spokeswoman Latarsha Gatlin. This year there are nine. While they study at Dartmouth, the ROTC students get their military educations by working with the Norwich program, about 55 miles to the north.

In addition to the ROTC increases, more officers are coming out of the Army’s Officer Candidate School and from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Aswell said.

The Air Force ROTC program has been steady for the past few years, producing about 1,850 to 1,90

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