All right, gotta stop lurking and throw my two cents in here.
I was a SPU and made First prior to leaving Ballston Spa, and I knew without a doubt that I was going to have VERY steep learning curve when I got to the boat. I am VERY glad I decided to do become a SPU when I had the chance. The reason is this; operational and maintenance experience. Things may have changed, but at the prototype, the command structure is very top heavy, almost all of the sea returnees show up to the command as first classes, and if they aren't they very soon become first classes. That being said, a typical division of may have 3 or 4 first classes, 2 SPU's, and then the students assigned to their section. A lot of the sea returnees saw the tour at prototype as a shore tour to get away from things, and to pursue their degree, as they should (within reason). This lead to me getting assigned a lot of work, and I learned more in the two years as a SPU then I would for the same amount of time at sea operationally. If you think about it, a typical Staff Instructor at a prototype will see more reactor startup's, shutdown's, and SCRAMs in their tour then they may see in quadruple the amount of time at sea. This leads to a very in depth knowledge of the systems and their inter-relationships with each other. I was able to qualify senior in rate on my boat within 2 months of arriving on my boat. I also showed up and asked the COB when I started cranking and who was I hot racking with ( an E-2 and E-5). I didn't mind, because I knew that I had a lot to learn about stuff other then nuclear power. There is always the bad seed, and there always will be, but that is one of the great things about serving in the military, you are forced to learn how to deal with people because they (usually) can't be fired. I believe that the SPU is a necessary component of the training cycle for Navy nukes, this is because that Sea returnees tend to have an immense operational knowledge of a nuke plant, however their theoretical knowledge sometimes is rusty due to the sole fact that they just don't use it as much aside from there rate specific knowledge associated with troubleshooting. The SPU just graduated from the program and SHOULD have a grasp on the theoretical side of plant operations and be able to relay that to other students. Some of the best end of cards (Final system checkout) I received was from a SPU (8 hr EOC for Electrical, thanks MCCloud!)
This all has helped me in my civilian career in the nuke industry as well. I find that I am more responsive to training then other older operators and because of my experiences teaching the information, I can then relay that more readily to my peers.
The SPU position is a great job if you are willing to put forth the time, effort and willingness to learn. Understand that you will be the low man on the totem pole, and that you will do a lot of work, but because of that you will get a lot of valuable experience.
Oh, and as for New School, yeah, it was pretty much a cakewalk. I don't know about it being a liberal commie school (depending on who you talk to, all colleges are), but some of the instructors I had were outstanding, and one of them was one of the Naval Reactors Inspectors at the site.
Just my two cents.