First, on prior enlisted becoming officers, the worst Eng I've had was once a SPU in Idaho, the best Eng I've had is a ringknocker, but my favorite EOOW was an ex-electrician, my second favorite academy. It's a crap shoot(repeat idea). One idea though, put more fleet people into STA (I think preciousblue is right about post pipeline, but prior to khaki). The fleet guys I've seen who go through there have been above the average for ossifers, while the ones that never went to the fleet, just pipeline to STA or equivalent, sucked. I know the fleet's manning issues are severe and losing more from the fleet would hurt, but it should be offset a bit by taking less from the pipeline. Maybe when the retention issue is fixed (I make myself laugh sometimes) the navy could try it. As for LDOs, no one but salty, diggity sea dogs are going to go there.
Second, I know this is a little off the beaten thread, but, I had an idea to improve a small aspect of the program. I find training on fast attacks (at least mine) to be worthless, completely and totally worthless, except for a naptime during the day. The entire training program is like the naked emperor; though it's an area, that while it can never replace operating, a lot more could be gained from a requirement that won't go away.
I figure that on fast attacks, for most underways some nukes get augmented. The requirement is, I believe, 75% of the augment is spent in school or on leave. The rest of the time they accomplish nothing worthwhile, and depending on luck, may or may not get f'd in the a** by some retard at squadron. So why not have the augmented nukes develop the training program (powerpoints, tests, goals, the whole deal)? Plus, they might be able to get training focused more on theory and integrated plant ops, and less on endless repetition of procedures. Maybe even teach us ETs a bit about valves and some MMs a bit of electrical magic.
The thing would be quota based, as in a stupid nuke can make x amount of stuff of good quality working from say 8 to 2, so unless you're really dumb, you should be able to work from 8 to noon, produce better quality and beat the flag on Fridays, if you come in at all. The key would be to emphasize that since augment is meant to be time for relaxing, that the requirement must take that into consideration. You could make the senior nuke on augment responsible for the whole group, so there's someone for the COC blame if the requirements are not met (read motivate his fellows and help with the work). For the most part, I don't think anyone would lose their mind if they weren't cleaning up subbase. And it would help prevent loss of knowledge/proficiency(a little) that happens from a long augment. Plus, eventually, the only thing that would have to be done would be to update for shipalts/revs/acns.
I imagine that if something like this happened it would be gayed up somewhere along the line and end up screwing people, but it could work in theory. Please tell me how it won't work in practice. I have some ideas on how it could be made to epic fail, but I don't think of everything.