09/15/2021
DOD is attempting to encourage 5th graders toward interests in STEM topics by operating a week-long camp-style experience called STARBASE and spending $35 million in the Fiscal Year 2020 to do it.
One might assume DOD was using this program to recruit for Junior ROTC programs, but they’re not. DOD doesn’t even keep long-term metrics to see if the program is successful at getting kids excited about the military or STEM. They just keep shoveling money at the program. The only success metrics DOD has are surveys taken immediately after the events, which show a marginal increase in receptive attitudes toward the military and to STEM learning.
Be careful, however, because as everybody knows, argument from anecdote is fallacy! DOD’s analysis is a spot-check, and the agency does no longitudinal analysis to see if the marginal improvements in perception kids see from attending STARBASE have any sort of staying power
STARBASE is a DOD program, run by the Secretary of Defense, that for $35 million annually provides mainly 5th graders from schools across the country with an opportunity to do “hands-on, minds-on” activities in STEM and with a chance to “interact with military personnel to explore careers and observe STEM applications in the ‘real world’.
Thirty-five million dollars is a LOT of money. Where is the money being spent? In Fiscal Year 2019, the last year for which there is data, 82 percent of the $28,219,681 operating budget, or $23,140,138, went to pay for the salaries of STARBASE personnel. Just 10 percent went to supplies and equipment to actually put on the events for the kids.
Sounds well enough, but what are they actually doing? Manifestly, STARBASE takes kids out of school for up to 25 hours to do nominally STEM-minded activities, including basic chemical reactions, building rockets similar to those commercially available, and other activities of the sort.
But the DOD is not in the business of educating kids (who are not the children of military personnel living on bases), as we have an entirely separate department for that. So, there must be some military interest here, right?
