Another Academy Idea

Apparently, 'tis the season for ideas to create new service academies for federal civilians. Not only is the proposal for a Public Service Academy moving along smartly on Capitol Hill, now radio talk show host and blogger Hugh Hewitt is pushing a plan for a National Intelligence Academy. Here's his pitch:

Given a chance to mandate the four year course of studies, the intelligence community would soon be welcoming graduates of such an academy into their professional life after four years of Arabic and Chinese, or Farsi and Russian, and a sophisticated immersion in history and of course security studies and intelligence practices. The natural location for such an institution is in Virginia near the alphabet agencies it would help staff, and the attraction of a free four year college education and a near-guarantee of employment afterwards would allow such an academy to stand up quickly and attract extraordinary 18 year olds immediately.

I'm on the record as being somewhat skeptical of efforts to create new institutions of higher learning to churn out the civil servants of tomorrow. I understand the CIA has some specific needs. But according to its director Michael Hayden, the agency is having no trouble attracting quality applicants. And couldn't the agency meet its future hiring goals by simply by funding scholarships at various existing institutions for courses of study important to the spies and analysts of the future? Do we really need to go the trouble of setting up a brick-and-mortar institution from scratch? After all, at the end of the day, the CIA is quite different from a military service, which has to mold its future officers to lead people into battle using specific techniques and strategies.