Analysis of subspecialty utilization of naval officers with a focus on time spent in subspecialty tours

摘要

This thesis examines the utilization of subspecialty coded naval officers, with a particular focus on determining the amount of time, or tour length, spent in subspecialty billets for naval officers who possess subspecialty codes received as a result of the Navy's funded graduate education (FGE) program. The results show that the tour length values currently used in the Postgraduate Education Quota Model (PQM) by the Navy are severely inflated, and result in annual FGE quotas being projected 22% below what is necessary to maintain an inventory of subspecialty coded officers capable of fulfilling the Navy's subspecialty billets requirements. Conclusions are that while the tour length values computed in this thesis are accurate, further research is warranted to validate empirically the other input variables used to estimate FGE quotas in order to achieve maximum utility from the PQM.