In an April Denver Post column, together with 91 cosigners, including various distinguished military thought leaders, I warned that leadership at the U.S. Air Force Academy was de-emphasizing academic excellence. I reported the majority sentiment surrounding me at the time, as a visiting professor from the University of California, San Diego, because those in uniform and those who depended on Air Force Academy for their livelihood could not.
What I failed to emphasize sufficiently in that column is the transient nature of excellence in cutting-edge educational programs, like those at the U.S. Air Force Academy (USAFA), in the absence of leaders who provide thoughtful academic stewardship to maintain and continuously renew them.
For decades, USAFA attracted and retained the “best and brightest” military and civilian/veteran thought leaders and cadets to participate in a vibrant educational exchange open to critical analysis and debate on the key militarily-relevant issues of the day.
To mention a few such issues: (1) autonomous and remotely-piloted aircraft and missile systems, (2) the legal and ethical operation of such systems, (3) space domain awareness, (4) modern tough and light structural materials with reduced radar cross section, (5) supply chain vulnerabilities of strategic materials and integrated circuits, (6) advanced radar and optical imaging and tracking systems, (7) real-time battlespace management, (8) cyberspace operations, and (9) secure global communications.
As reported elsewhere, the exodus of professors (first of civilians/veterans, and now of active duty military) has greatly accelerated. Backfilling these substantial losses with primarily military personnel with adequate technical backgrounds has largely proved fruitless, as few such military personnel are actually available to be removed from their other essential jobs for a tour at USAFA, and this ongoing exodus of talent at USAFA is by now broadly known.
Civilian university presidents are generally well compensated, and for good reason. They set the academic tone, expectations, and policies of an entire educational institution, and their actions in this role are meticulously scrutinized by the public. They appoint the best departmental leadership they possibly can, demand that these leaders do the same when recruiting and retaining individual faculty, and take responsibility when problems arise.
Notably, day-to-day, a good university president boldly steps aside, and relies on departmental leadership and senior faculty, to develop a vibrant academic senate responsible for debating and instituting their joint academic vision. They do not attempt to micromanage such complex educational operations from above based on their own, admittedly limited, domain-specific expertise, while obscuring their various decisions under NDAs. USAFA has, this year, spectacularly failed to shepherd its own educational reforms in such a transparent, distributed manner, which must place trust in its own senior faculty.
By virtue of my former position as a distinguished visiting professor in the department (DFME) that delivers the mechanical engineering and systems engineering degree programs at the Air Force Academy, I am acutely aware of its specific challenges. In 2024, DFME had 24 talented instructors (counting both active duty military and civilian/veterans). Today, there are 15.
By this time in 2026, by my careful count, at most 9 will remain, with possibly two new captains joining. Of course, there will also be no new visiting professors due to the major cutbacks in the DVP program implemented by USAFA.
In the fall, DFME teaches 12 different courses to 600+ distinct cadets (many of whom are themselves enrolled in 3 or 4 courses). The systems engineering major is eviscerated, with only one dedicated instructor remaining by next year.
Losses in other key academic departments are similar, and adequate replacements are scant. By June, Astronautics is facing the loss of seven PhD faculty (one colonel, five lieutenant colonels, and one 30-year civilian), each with decades of relevant space systems development and teaching experience.
Coupled with the present hiring freeze, numbers like this are intractable, and options are limited (most imminently, it appears likely that DFME must be subsumed into aeronautics by summer 2026).
Accordingly, class sizes are markedly increasing, and the job satisfaction of instructors is substantially decreasing.
Also telling: multiple parents whom I know personally, themselves USAFA grads and/or current or recent USAFA instructors, are now recommending to their own children and extended family to go to the USNA, or to AFROTC programs at top civilian universities instead of USAFA.
The zeitgeist within Fairchild Hall is grim. Cadets and potential future cadets are aware, and largely share the same general mood. The “best of the best” of each incoming class are accepted into the Martinson Honors Program; of the 30 incoming cadets accepted into this distinguished program this year, 20 of them ultimately decided to go elsewhere.
In short, the question being asked at USAFA is no longer one of academic excellence, but has shifted quickly to an investigation questioning academic adequacy, as certified by the Higher Learning Commission (HLC) accreditation board. Regardless of the outcome of this ongoing HLC investigation, however, as a nation we must demand a return to academic excellence at USAFA, to operate “far, far above” its (accredited) academic and military competitors. Failure is not an option. We must “aim higher”.
There is a viable path forward.
A radical change in the direction of USAFA is needed, to pivot and refocus, and talented new civilian/veteran instructors must be aggressively recruited.
The Department of Defense must recognize USAFA education as a national strategic priority, and allocate adequate financial resources.
Such a recovery must start at the top, as the USAFA community at large has unfortunately lost all confidence in its current leadership. A viable path forward seems to be as follows:
• Identify and appoint a new (military 3 star) superintendent,
• Eliminate the largely ceremonial (military 2 star) vice superintendent position,
• Create a new long-term (civilian, senior executive service officer) provost position, who works with the USAFA Superintendent and reports to the Secretary of the Air Force, and
• Retain and fill the (military 1 star) dean position, which has been vacant since May.
To this new provost position, an accessible long-term civilian faculty member must be appointed who is intimately familiar with the existing USAFA educational programs and the unique challenges involved in delivering them. Excellent candidates for such a civilian provost position are readily available. This restructuring of leadership will bring an independent, education-oriented, mission-relevant perspective to the Superintendent’s office, with a focus on continuity, and on transparency and accessibility by cadets and faculty alike.
Finally, a new “blue ribbon” panel of sorts, with a bold new vision and the authority to implement it, must be formulated from the ground up, as the current Board of Visitors proved itself at a meeting (recorded by KOAA) on Aug. 7 to be a politically-focused rubber stamp on the status quo.
Such a panel should be composed of apolitical luminaries on modern military thinking who no longer have a horse in the race regarding their own military promotions or reelection campaigns. Recently retired experts in their respective areas, such as Will Roper and Frank Kendall, seem appropriate and hopefully available.
Can USAFA dig itself out of the hole it now finds itself in? Possibly. However, it will take adequate funding, substantial will (structural changes are hard), major refocusing of the academic programs that USAFA offers, and a reformulation of the leadership and advisory panel organization that deliberates and affects these changes.
Working together with the Senate Armed Services Committee, the Higher Learning Commission is now in a unique position to demand these things on behalf of the American people. It may well be one of the most challenging and impactful actions that the HLC has ever undertaken.
Thomas Bewley is a full professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of California San Diego, where he specializes in the research and teaching of autonomy, robotics, numerics, and the forecasting of extreme weather. He spent the ’24-’25 academic year as a distinguished visiting professor at the U.S. Air Force Academy.
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