Educating for Innovation: Finding Balance in the Army's Professional Military Education System

Abstract : The Army Operating Concept describes the challenges of future warfare as volatile, complex, and uncertain. It goes on to state that winning in such an environment will require innovative, adaptive leaders and cohesive teams who thrive in complex and uncertain environments. In order to meet those challenges, the institutional Army must develop in leaders the appropriate skill sets. However, the professional military education (PME) system that the Army operates under is largely outdated and based on industrial age models. The arrival of the Army University signals a commitment to confronting the flaws in the Army's PME, but it does little to address the balance between training and education. This study then fills that gap by closely examining the current state of the Army's education system, the attributes needed in officers to meet today's challenges, education's role in developing those attributes, and the future of the Army's education system. By doing so, it aims to recommend a set of feasible changes that the Army can make to adjust the balance between education and training in the Army's PME. It then analyzes those solutions through the lens of various stakeholders to determine their validity.