Matthew Powell & Dafydd Townley
Militaries have provided academic education, alongside military training, for several centuries. This phenomenon began with the Prussian Staff College as early as 1801. Entrants into this staff college underwent a rigorous university level education with a curriculum focused on military history, mathematics, science and a foreign language (initially either French or Russian). For the Prussian army, graduation from this staff college was an essential requirement to be appointed to the Prussian General Staff. Within the Prussian Staff College, there was a clear emphasis on the purpose of the education provided to attendees, which was to enhance the cognitive abilities of those that would serve under senior general officers. These staff officers were educated in order to provide the “powerful brain of the military body” (Wilkinson 1913). The catalyst for the creation of such a body within the Prussian army were a series of crushing defeats suffered at the hands of the French under Napoleon Bonaparte (Newland 2005). These reforms led to the Prussian army becoming one of the most formidable in Europe, and resulting in victories over Denmark, Austria and France in the 1860s and 1870s. Other European militaries adopted similar reforms within their own armed forces, and this trend for more highly educated personnel has continued through the twentieth and into the twenty-first century, which has resulted in the creation of formalised professional military education (Libel 2021).
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