| The Reserve Officers' Training Corps program relies upon the active cooperation of the military and civilian institutions of higher learning to produce active-duty and reserve officers. As a result, the officers so produced have reflected both their civilian and military educations.;By 1980, ROTC had become voluntary, rather than compulsory, almost everywhere. It had also jettisoned its heavy military emphasis; the curriculum required as few as 180 contact hours and included courses taught by regular civilian faculty. Its students were now primarily Southern and Midwestern and they included large numbers of women and minority students. Furthermore, ROTC had become indispensable as a means of populating the active-duty, rather than the reserve, officer ranks.;These and other remarkable changes over a relatively short time period resulted from the interaction of substantial changes in the ROTC program itself, in American higher education, and in the military. Between 1950 and 1980 all of these institutions, like American society more generally, became more specialized, differentiated, professional, and meritocratic. An analysis of ROTC, then, has scholarly importance well beyond that of understanding officer procurement and training. This dissertation uses the evolution of ROTC to examine broader social and institutional changes during most of the Cold War era.;Data for the dissertation draw heavily on diverse military archives located at the National Archives, the Air Force Historical Research Agency, the Army Center of Military History, and several ROTC units. It also utilizes the archives of six universities: Duquesne University; Kent State University; and the Universities of Illinois, Michigan, Pittsburgh and Texas. The papers of several umbrella organizations, such as the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges and three joint civilian-military advisory boards, also provide empirical documentation.;In 1950, the ROTC program was primarily composed of white, male students from private Eastern schools and Land-Grant universities nationwide. These students took a curriculum of 480 contact hours that included heavy doses of drill and military ceremony. The program, mandatory for two years on most campuses for all physically fit males, served largely to populate the reserve component of each service. |
