They tried that with CEOTP — and it failed, because almost no one was actually finishing a degree. The joke we CEOTPs had was “I promised to work on my degree, and the military promised me the time to do it — and we were both lieing”. The op tempo for junior officers just doesn’t lend itself to distance learning. And once you become a senior Captain, the job tempo can even increase. The few real actual quiet positions are cubicles occupied with Majs and LCols, who tend have a deputy they can delegate to if they’re drowned in schoolwork. Lts and Capts don‘t have that option.
You can’t easily fit a four year degree into the occasional few months of post-Latvia reduced op tempo, or in between frigate deployments. The advantage of ROTP and DEO is that education time is front loaded. But whatever model, the time has to fit in somewhere. One model could be enrolment for CEOTP/OCTP, then five years regimental service, then four years IBDP — that gets to a similar end state as ROTP, only with younger and more immature subbies, and older captains as undergrads — but what problem would actually be solved by 18 year old 2Lts and 23 year old freshmen?
