Staff college


Staff college trains military officers in the administrative, military staff and policy aspects of their profession. It is usual for such training to occur at several levels in a career. For example, an officer may be sent to various staff courses: as a captain they may be sent to a single service command and staff school to prepare for company command and equivalent staff posts; as a major to a single or joint service college to prepare for battalion command and equivalent staff posts; and as a colonel or brigadier to a higher staff college to prepare for brigade and division command and equivalent postings.
The success of staff colleges spawned, in the mid-twentieth century, a civilian imitation in what are called administrative staff colleges. These institutions apply some of the principles of the education of the military colleges to the executive development of managers from both the public and private sectors of the economy. The first and best-known administrative staff college was established in Britain at Greenlands near Henley, Oxfordshire and is now renamed Henley Management College.

History

The first modern staff college was that of Prussia. Prussian advanced officer education began under the reign of Frederick the Great in 1710. The Seven Years' War demonstrated the inadequacy of the education that generals had at that time, but it was not until 1801 that staff training in a modern sense began when Gerhard von Scharnhorst became the director of the Prussian Military Academy. Prussian defeats by Napoleon I led to the creation of the Allgemeine Kriegsschule with a nine-month programme covering mathematics, tactics, strategy, staff work, weapons science, military geography, languages, physics, chemistry, and administration. The German staff courses have been used as a basic templates for other staff courses around the world.

Staff course formats

Nations have taken a wide variety of approaches to the form, curriculum and status of staff colleges, but have much in common with the Prussian courses of the early 19th Century. Some courses act as filters for promotion or entry into a specialist staff corps. The length of courses varies widely, from three months to three years, with some having entrance and/or exit examinations. The more senior the course, the more likely that it will include strategic, political and joint aspects, with junior courses often focusing on single service and tactical military aspects of warfare.

Idiom

Certain terms of art or idiom have developed in staff colleges over time, and then been used in wider college or university settings and everyday usage, including:
  • staff refers to the professional personnel and employees of the college;
  • fight the white, normally expressed as do not fight the white, where the 'white' is the question given to students, which may lack realism or not fit current operations. A "pink" is the Staff College's staff answer to a particular problem or issue. Pinks and whites referred to the color coding of course material where problems and information for use of students was printed on standard white sheets of papers while material intended for use by directing staff was produced on pink sheets. This practice originates from staff colleges of British origins. The tradition survives across several Commonwealth staff colleges such as the Command and Staff College, Quetta.

    Staff colleges

The following is an incomplete list of staff colleges, by continent by country:

Africa

Ghana

Argentina

  • Escuela Superior de Guerra "Teniente General Luis María Campos".

    Brazil

Army
  • Escola de Comando e Estado-Maior do Exército
  • Escola de Aperfeiçoamento de Oficiais
  • Escola de Aperfeiçoamento de Sargentos das Armas
  • Escola de Instrução Especializada
    Navy
  • Escola de Guerra Naval
    Air Force
  • Escola de Comando e Estado Maior da Aeronáutica
  • Escola de Aperfeiçoamento de Oficiais da Aeronáutica

    Canada

  • Canadian Army Command and Staff College
  • Canadian Forces College

    United States

Air Force
  • Air University, HQ at Maxwell AFB, Alabama
  • *USAF Air War College
  • *School of Advanced Air and Space Studies
  • *Air Command and Staff College
  • *Squadron Officer School
  • *Air Force Institute of Technology
    Army
  • U.S. Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, PA
  • Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, KS
  • *School for Command Preparation
  • *School of Advanced Military Studies
  • *Command and General Staff School
  • *School for Advanced Leadership and Tactics
  • U.S. Army Warrant Officer Career College, Fort Rucker, AL
    Navy
  • Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island
  • *College of Naval Warfare
  • *Maritime Advanced Warfighting School
  • *College of Naval Command and Staff
  • Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California
    Marines
  • Marine Corps University, Marine Corps Base, Quantico, VA
  • *Marine Corps War College
  • *School of Advanced Warfighting
  • *Marine Corps Command and Staff College
  • *Expeditionary Warfare School
    Joint
  • Defense Acquisition University - five campuses - HQ at Fort Belvoir, Virginia
  • National Defense University in Washington D.C.
  • *National War College
  • *Industrial College of the Armed Forces
  • *Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Virginia,

    Asia

Bangladesh

  • Defence Services Command And Staff College
  • National Defence College

    China

  • People's Liberation Army National Defense University
  • *Nanjing PLA Army Command College
  • *Shijiazhuang PLA Army Command College
  • *PLA Naval Command College
  • *PLA Air Force Command College
  • *PLA Artillery Command College
  • *Second Artillery Corps Command College

    India

Tri-Service
Tri-Service
  • Joint Staff College
    JGSDF and IJA
  • JGSDF TERCOM
  • JGSDF Staff College - Reorganised into TERCOM in 2018
  • Army War College - Abolished in 1945
  • Army Artillery and Engineer School - Renamed Army Science School in 1941, abolished in 1945
    JMSDF and IJN
  • JMSDF Staff College
  • Naval War College - Abolished in 1945
    JASDF
  • Air Staff College

    Jordan

Kuwait

Lebanon

  • Fouad Shehab Command and Staff College

    Nepal

  • Kathmandu, Nepal
  • Kathmandu, Nepal

    Pakistan

  • National Defence University
  • Command and Staff College
  • PAF Air War College
  • Pakistan Navy War College

    Philippines

  • Armed Forces of the Philippines Command and General Staff College

    Saudi Arabia

  • Saudi Armed Forces Command and Staff College

    Singapore

  • Goh Keng Swee Command and Staff College

    Sri Lanka

Tri-Service
  • National Defence College, Sri Lanka
  • Defence Services Command and Staff College
  • General Sir John Kotelawala Defence University
    Army
  • Army War College, Buttala
  • Volunteer Force Training School
  • Army School of Logistics
    Navy
  • Naval and Maritime Academy
    Air Force
  • SLAF Junior Command & Staff College

    Taiwan (Republic of China)

  • National Defense University
  • *Army Command and Staff College
  • *Naval Command and Staff College
  • *Air Command and Staff College

    United Arab Emirates

  • Armed Forces of the UAE Command and Staff College

    Europe

Finland

  • National Defence University

    France

  • École de guerre. Created in 1993 by the fusion of the four Écoles supérieures de guerre. Formerly known as
  • Centre des hautes études militaires . Created in 1952. The students must have completed the École de guerre.
  • Institut des hautes études de la défense nationale. Created in 1936. The students are civilians, both civil servants and high-profile executives, but the students of the Centre des hautes études militaires also attend the Institut..
  • École supérieure des officiers de réserve spécialistes d'état-major. Following the defeat of Franco-Prussian War, it was created in 1899 by a group of Reserve Officers and then officially became a staff college in 1900.
All these schools are seated in the école militaire in Paris.

Germany

  • Führungsakademie der Bundeswehr, Bundeswehr Command and Staff College.
  • Bundesakademie für Sicherheitspolitik, Federal Academy for Security Policy.

    Italy

  • Istituto di Studi Militari Marittimi, The Naval War College located within the Arsenale Marittimo in Venice.
  • Istituto di Scienze Militari Aeronautiche, The Aeronautics and Defence Science Institute located in Florence.