Unless a Sailor is altogether incompatible with the Navy, I recommend STAR to them.
Why?
Well, when a Sailor reports to the ship, he/she has approximately 4-4.5 years left on their contract. Those years will be spent on the ship. There is no shore duty option. As we have covered before, sea duty is, well, sea duty. Not much time given or available for the Sailor to take off duty courses or otherwise enrich themselves.
The money is always a plus.
A STAR reenlistment is a good deal because, if you keep your Sailor nose relatively clean, you can qualify SIR, ESWS/EAWS/SS, and get that 24 month sea duty waiver to go to Prototype as an instructor. If you do this, you shorten your sea tour by 12-18 months and pick up a shore duty. Shore duty is good for a whole range of reasons, not the least of which is the ability to pursue off duty education. Also, if you don't plan on making a career out of it, shore duty is much more preferable for job-hunting. It certainly makes it easy to job hunt when you are making circles in the Gulf.
There is no reason that every nuke (that wants to) can't serve 8 years, earn a college degree, put some money away, and conduct a successful job hunt before getting out.
Acting like you are selling two years of your life is a pretty defeatist way to view it. Those two years are your two years to make yourself extremely competitive either for higher rank or civilian jobs.
Try using this SRB Calculator to get your award level:
http://staynavytools.bol.navy.mil/SRB/