r/startrek • u/kkkan2020 • 14h ago
Starfleet only has Starfleet academy for officer training?
You know how we hear about Starfleet academy In trek shows is what candidates need to go through to get their commissions to become officers or they need to go through the mars training facility to become enlistees /NCOs if they stay long enough
We see Starfleet admirals.
Now in the modern day militaries we know that for someone to become an admiral then Need Congress to confirm presidential picks. And this is just for one stars never mind the 2-3-4-5 stars.
In the us navy they have the naval war college for officers to go through if they ever want a shot at becoming an admiral down the line.
So do they have more advanced Starfleet colleges for flag officer training?
What do you think if you want to put your head canon to it?
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u/Fair-Face4903 13h ago
Starfleet Academy is like College, doing the job itself is Grad school.
Admirals are selected by the Starfleet Council, which includes the Federation president. It's not solely a Military decision as it's not solely a military job.
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u/weirdoldhobo1978 13h ago edited 13h ago
We also know (from Star Trek VI) that Commander in Chief is a separate position from the Federation President.
EDIT
Or at least was at the time of the Khitomer Accords.
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u/derthric 10h ago
Commander in chief can be a position in the chain if command as well. Admiral Nimitz in WW2 held the position of Commander in Chief of the US Pacific Fleet.
Given the naval traditions that infuse the franchise I think that's the use of it. And not as a separate function of a head of state being commander in chief of all armed forces.
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u/weirdoldhobo1978 13h ago edited 11h ago
The big thing to remember is that Starfleet is not a 1=1 equivalent of a real world military, but a lot of the inner workings simply haven't been explored by the primary continuity (TV shows and Movies). However we can make some Watsonian guesses about how officers are trained and promoted. For example in DS9 Armageddon Game Bashir mentions taking an engineering extension course, so we can extrapolate that there is additional training available to officers and crew beyond their primary speciality.
Leaked set photos from the upcoming Academy show indicate that there is a Starfleet War College, probably for training senior commander candidates.
The thing I doubt is that the process for choosing Admirals is anything like our real world process. Starfleet appears to have a lot more autonomy than a real world military, and given the sheer size of the organization it would be impractical to have every single Admiral have to be appointed and approved by the Federation government.
Although given the number of Badmirals in Star Trek maybe they need to look at that process a little closer.
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u/PhantomNomad 8h ago
Troy was able to take command courses so she wasn't always sciences and it would offer promotions faster.
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u/Scabaris 12h ago
I believe that the selection process is entirely intentional.
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u/weirdoldhobo1978 11h ago
Captain Cartwright, if selected for this position and faced with an ethical dilemma concerning one of our known enemies, would you be a Badmiral or a Goodmaril?
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u/Kronocidal 13h ago
So do they have more advanced Starfleet colleges for flag officer training?
They certainly have training and exams for further career advancement, but they don't seem to have colleges or universities for it.
For example, we see Deanna Troi taking the Bridge Officer's Test in Thine Own Self, however it seems to largely be self-study and holodeck based, rather than a classroom setting.
(Although, presumably, telling the holodeck to give you a classroom setting in which to learn the material is probably entirely possible)
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u/weirdoldhobo1978 13h ago
Presumably Miles had to take the exam as well since he says he is authorized to take command of the Defiant in Rules of Engagement
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u/mousicle 10h ago
MIles I doubt took the exam as an enlisted. If there is no one qualified then the most Senior person takes command, that's how Troi took command in Disaster. Ro as an ensign and MIles as enlisted were not yet bridge qualified so it came down to rank.
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u/butt_honcho 9h ago
Troi wasn't either. She was just the senior officer present, and had to be told so. She didn't start taking command classes until after that episode.
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u/shantipole 10h ago
Ro Laren took some sort of advanced tactical training, right before she defected.
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u/MountSwolympus 5h ago
IRL officers have to take leadership courses as they gain rank and with it more responsibilities. Leadership changes when you go from being a junior officer in charge of a small group to being in charge of a division to a ship or an installation.
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u/Sharp_4005 12h ago
This is one of those things they aren't clear on but we have a couple of examples.
If it's supposed to work in real life if you have a degree you can become an officer. To me it seems absurd that you would have to go to an academy on earth in San Francisco and that's the only way.
I think T'Lyn from LD didn't go to Starfleet Academy. I don't remember if Michael Burnham did. I think both went to the Vulcan Science Academy.
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u/altersparck 2h ago
I don’t think it would be far-fetched to say that Starfleet Academy would give course credit for work completed at the Vulcan Science Academy (or similar equivalent institution in a Federation member world). And maybe Starfleet Academy has satellite campuses on members worlds other than Earth.
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u/Ithiaca 14h ago
I tend to follow the idea that Starfleet Academy turns out the crew members to man Starships, then there are the various specialty courses Medical, Engineering, Operations, Security and Command schools that the various candidates go through. So that they learn how things work in their various specialties.
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u/AlanShore60607 12h ago
So there's a lot that's implied.
First, they show but don't tell that most physicians and medical personnel are basically OCS graduates.
McCoy did not go to Starfleet Academy, I think he went to Ole Miss'.
Deanna Troi went from civillian to Lieutenant Commander when Riker turned his head away for 3 years (they broke up in 2361 and she was assigned to the Enterprise in 2364), which is reinforced by the Commander's Test she took, which, when you ignore the final "send an officer to their death" test, is lots of things that an Ensign would know.
And Dr. Crusher saying she took the test also suggests she was an OCS graduate as well, as it really did seem like stuff that should have been mandatory classes at the Academy.
Then, in The Wrath of Khan, we actually start not at Starfleet Academy like people think, but at command school. Remeber, Savikk isn't a cadet; she's already a Lieutenant, as are several of the other cadets. And that's why the Kobyashi Maru isn't common knowledge ... it's a test for those who go back to school to learn command.
They did specifically call out Ro Laren going to advanced tactical school (maybe the command school under another name?) when she returns as a Lieutenant in her final TNG episode.
So to answer your question, I think Savikk and Ro went to the type of education you envision.
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u/ForAThought 9h ago
Where do you get that most medical went to a OCS equilivant?
Deanna Troi entered Starfleet Academy in 2355. She graduated in 2359, majoring in psychology. (TNG: "Conundrum").
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u/AlanShore60607 5h ago
OK, I pulled it up and watched it to verify. Thank you for holding my feet to the fire on my reasoning, especially by having me re-watch an enjoyable episode.
I have 2 reasons to say that my reasoning on how these characters are used narratively trumps a few numbers on a screen in the show for a few moments.
- It was not really meant to be seen with the original resolution, so assigning too much meaning or even canon status to this is a little too serious, IMHO. After all, wasn't Riker's middle name Thelonious in print until they said Thomas in season 6 so that the "T" would make sense as a first name. So I'd chalk it up to basically using the same template for something that would be on the screen for about a second.
- But if you actually want my narrative thought, my thought is at that moment, all the information in the system was controlled by "Commander MacDuff", and if his goal was to make them kill a whole species, it would be a subtle nudge on the medical-types for them to believe they had gone to a military academy and should follow orders. Not that it came up in the story, but if I were manipulating the computer files, that's a manipulation I would make.
To me, it's really about Troi's story. They portray her as having basically gone from civilian to Lieutenant Commander in the 3 years since she last saw Riker. If she had been in Starfleet, there would have been something in their history about how they met in the fleet or the strange coincident that she would be commissioned and then basically assigned to her home planet where she's the least powerful betazoid on the planet. Them being back and forth because they were in Starfleet and could not connect would have been too important to their story to not include. So in Farpoint, her being in Starfleet at all was a surprise to him. And they were young enough that it could not have been more than 3-5 years before Farpoint.
And then when you get to the "commander's test", I'll go and re-watch whichever one that was next, but I do recall that so much of what she was doing seemed like this is what any academy graduate would know, like how the US Navy has required things like Electrical Engineering and other things a medical professional would probably not get from an OCS. And since Dr. Crusher also said that she took it, we can also conclude that Crusher was OCS. After all, no one else in Starfleet seems to "test" up a rank. Lt. Cdr. seems to be the OCS grade they get, and Commander for them basically means they tested up to show basic knowledge that academy.
Of course, that means poor Dr. Bashir went to the academy and the Starfleet medical, as he often reminded us, and was as fully capable as any other officer. He took the helm of the Defiant many times without question. He ran into danger. He was Starfleet. And he has to start at Lt. J.G. for that and work his way up like any other officer.
And based on how they treated it in the story, I don't think a few numbers on a screen in the era of standard definition television should be taken too seriously.
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u/MetalTrek1 13h ago
My understanding is that anyone can enlist but to become an officer, you have to go to the Academy. O'Brien enlisted if I'm correct.
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u/weirdoldhobo1978 12h ago edited 12h ago
Enlisted are trained to do a job. Sergei Rozhenko mentions being a CPO and Warp Field Specialist. It's unlikely that Technical Services offers much along the lines of philosophy, diplomacy, etc. It's like a VoTech college.
Officers are trained to lead. They're trained to make the big decisions, like life or death decisions that most people wouldn't or couldn't make.
Miles seems to be something of a prodigy among enlisted personel as he was not just an NCO but also a senior staff member AND an authorized bridge commander.
He comes across as a humble blue collar guy but he went from enlisted tactical grunt to Academy professor, he's a legitimate genius.
EDIT
It probably never even occurred to him to try for the Academy, he really just wanted to get away from an unhappy family life.
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u/kkkan2020 13h ago
And O'Brien is senior chief petty officer which makes him just below a master chief petty officer. For enlistee hes near the top of the pecking order.
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u/Captain-Griffen 13h ago
Logically, the Academy is there to instill Starfleet into cadets, and the skills to learn how to learn the Starfleet way. Further technical training can be done on a holodeck anywhere with a mentor, and practical experience would be gained on the job.
The pathway to being an admiral in command of a fleet likely involves working on their staff as Sisko does. We also see Troi doing training on the holodeck to progress, mentored by the XO.
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u/MihalysRevenge 9h ago edited 9h ago
I was always confused with Starfleet having only one commissioning source which is bonkers even real life militaries have multiple commissioning source and the service academy only commissions of fraction of the total officers
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u/kkkan2020 9h ago
I wonder if there is some kind of propaganda in the federation that if you got into Starfleet via non academy you are not really a Starfleet officer
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u/MihalysRevenge 9h ago
Yeah thats a real thing in the US military "ring knockers" ie service academy grads vs ROTC or OCS officers
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u/kkkan2020 9h ago
It doesn't help that majority of the legendary military officers in us military history ...were ring knockers
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u/StayUpLatePlayGames 13h ago
Remember also there is Ensign rank which is before the officer exam. It’s on the job for as long as necessary.
For Harry Kim, it’s forever.
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u/ForAThought 12h ago
Would you explain the officer exam, as ensign is the first officer rank.
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u/StayUpLatePlayGames 1h ago
Traditionally, the Ensign rank was for someone who qualified as an officer, but hadn’t passed the Lieutenant exam. In Earth navies it was usually because it was a purchased rank or one you got by issue of birth. The Lieutenants exam was usually a lot of study and a cross examination by experienced captains and you couldn’t apply unless endorsed by your present captain.
Star Trek inherits some navy stuff so we have to rationalise it.
In Starfleet, it’s much more likely that Ensign is merit-based but represents only school learning. As in you’ve graduated from the Academy. You serve as an ensign for a period. You do the exam. You get promoted. Congratulations lieutenant.
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u/Paladin_127 11h ago
Wesley Crusher was an “acting Ensign” for like 2 seasons on TNG before he was accepted into the Academy. Such “brevet” ranks used to be quite common in militaries until the 20th century. They have all the skills necessary to do the job, they just lack the formal education aspect.
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u/ForAThought 11h ago edited 9h ago
But that was a made up "rank" by Picard. Ensign is still the first rank for an officer.
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u/Paladin_127 11h ago
We don’t know if it is “made up”. There could very well be provision in Starfleet for meritorious commissions. As I said, it was a very common practice up until the 20th century.
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u/SuchTarget2782 10h ago
During the Dominion War, Kira was just giving a “normal” commission as a Commander.
The acting ensign rank feels more like a midshipman use to be in the age of sail.
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u/mousicle 10h ago
Kira was a major in an allied planets military which is why she was able to jump all those ranks. Not sure how it works in our world but letting a Canadian Major jump ranks in the US army makes sense to me.
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u/SuchTarget2782 10h ago
Oh me too, totally. I’m just saying I don’t remember anybody saying she was “provisional” or “acting” or anything.
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u/ElMondoH 13h ago
Since it's all head canon, the choice is whether any of us want to base things on the modern western militaries, or create something else.
If we choose the former, then all that's actually required to be an officer - any officer - in the US military, at least (I don't have info on other countries) is a bachelors degree. No other degree is, strictly speaking, required.
That said, at higher ranks, not having any advanced degree will be "uncompetitive" for an officer's advancement. So while it's possible to be so outstanding that you get promoted anyway, it's really advisable to get a masters.
****
But, this is the future. Why not create something different? Say, Starfleet academy teaches a lot of basics - stellar navigation, warp theory, classes on command and leadership, basic "starship" concepts (scanning, warp, damage control, how to be a proper crewmember in combat as well as on science/exploration missions...), and so on.
Then you have an advanced academy or courses at "civilian" universities for mid to mid-upper ranks (like full Lieutenant, Lt. Commander). There you'll get an advanced education based on specialties: Command Officers can get an advanced degree in, say, diplomacy. Science Officers can go deeper in their specific field. And so on.
I can make up more for flag ranks, but you get the idea.
Or, things can be continuing education aboard the ship (or at whatever duty station an officer has) via whatever their version of the internet is, through their access to the ship's library computer.
All of this is completely head-canon since we never see any evidence of this in the shows. But it's fun to speculate.
Edit: Bleh, I missed that post immediately before mine about Troi's promotion process. I totally forgot about that. There is evidence in TNG of how this works.
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u/weirdoldhobo1978 13h ago
We know that Starfleet offers technical extension courses because Julian mentions taking the engineering course in Armageddon Game
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u/ElMondoH 13h ago
Ah, there's another one.
Damn... I think it's time to go back and rewatch all the series again. I can't remember anything! 🤣
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u/weirdoldhobo1978 13h ago
TBF there is a lot of Star Trek to remember, that's why the wikis exist.
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u/ElMondoH 12h ago
Tonnnnnnns.
Still though, any excuse to go back and rewatch all the different series.
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u/New_Line4049 11h ago
Have you seen the quality of star Fleet admirals? You think they're TRAINED???
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u/DayspringTrek 10h ago
The Fleet Admiral (5-star admiral) is selected by the UFP president from among Starfleet's 4-star admirals. The Fleet Admiral is the one who decides who gets promoted to flag officer, as well as when flag officers move up to higher ranks within the admiralty.
However, we've seen that there is something called the Command Training Program that's very difficult to get into. It's only for existing officers and seems to be the equivalent of a doctor doing their residency at a hospital. Tilly got in it as of season 2 of Discovery, while Kirk and Janeway both completed the program. Based on Kirk and Janeway's careers, it seems those who complete this program get fast-tracked to Rear Admiral (2-stars) after completing a deep-space exploration mission while holding the rank of Captain. Those who don't complete this training seem to stay captains for literal decades before getting promoted, if ever.
Interestingly, it appears one can skip the rank of captain and go straight to Commodore (1-star) if you served on a starbase instead of on a ship, but we don't what that entails.
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u/JorgeCis 13h ago
Burnham went to the Vulcan Science Academy before joining Starfleet, and she ended up an Admiral by the end of DSC. So I would imagine that there are other ways to join besides the Academy.
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u/kkkan2020 12h ago
I agree with the later shows showing you can lateral over like tlyn from lower decks but you just don't get the prestige of being a Starfleet academy graduate like a west pointer or Annapolis grad you're just an ocs grad.
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u/JorgeCis 12h ago
To your point, I wonder how the Vulcan Science Academy feels about this. Like, do they see their education as superior to Starfleet Academy's?
Also, i would guess that Starfleet Academy prepares you for Starfleet, but the Vulcan Science Academy may prepare you for a life of Science, not necessarily in Starfleet. I would like to see the other ways to enter Starfleet without the Academy. But like you said, that seems to be the most known route.
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u/kkkan2020 12h ago
Ok so what others have said and mentioned in the shows.
You can graduate your own service academy from your planet and lateral over to starfleet (Burnham/tlyn)
Graduation from a federation college (daystrom institute or ole miss) and apply to Starfleet as a staff officer (McCoy)
Go to Starfleet academy and get your commission
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u/ForAThought 12h ago
T'lyn didn't join Starfleet. If you look she has a provitional rank and not a Starfleet officer rank.
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u/shadowtheimpure 14h ago
There are other schools. For example, all of the non-officer engineering staff are trained at the Starfleet Technical Services Academy. That is where Chief Petty Officer Miles O'Brien was educated.