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Airborne School is heavily given out to ROTC, be it West Point or Community Colleges with a ROTC program. I've seen short female dieticians go through it as a elective college course. It does contribute to their degree.
Reason why is as of 2008 (might be different now), Airborne School produced 17,000 airborne qualified soldiers per year, be it army or other branches Special Forces (they do it before HALO training), but it is also literally next dore to Fort Benning/Moore's Officer Candidacy School. It's what officer candidates do after basic training from what they told me.
So there is a very close relation. It makes officers look good already having a badge that looks really elite to non-airborne troops. You can do that or Air Assault. We don't train for Glider School anymore (Canada technically has one but you can never get into it unless training to be a Canadian pilot). It just isn't happening that a ROTC student is going to get their Ranger Tab, Sapper Tab, or Special Forces Tab. I see my old unit (now the 11th Infantry) has a arctic tab.... but I suspect they are not sending college kids to Black Rapids, Alaska for that. The cost of delivering them alone is too much money, you can train a couple paratroopers for that amount. It's just a three week course.
Reason why is as of 2008 (might be different now), Airborne School produced 17,000 airborne qualified soldiers per year, be it army or other branches Special Forces (they do it before HALO training), but it is also literally next dore to Fort Benning/Moore's Officer Candidacy School. It's what officer candidates do after basic training from what they told me.
So there is a very close relation. It makes officers look good already having a badge that looks really elite to non-airborne troops. You can do that or Air Assault. We don't train for Glider School anymore (Canada technically has one but you can never get into it unless training to be a Canadian pilot). It just isn't happening that a ROTC student is going to get their Ranger Tab, Sapper Tab, or Special Forces Tab. I see my old unit (now the 11th Infantry) has a arctic tab.... but I suspect they are not sending college kids to Black Rapids, Alaska for that. The cost of delivering them alone is too much money, you can train a couple paratroopers for that amount. It's just a three week course.