Shutdown Hits Military Thinkers, Planners by Sydney Freedberg, Breaking Defense.
… There’s an administrative and accounting issue here that is causing real-world headaches. Some professional military education programs, especially for officers, take six months or more. Sending a student to these longer courses counts as a “Permanent Change of Station” (PCS) and the money to do so is spent up front. So while the shutdown means no more students can go to PCS courses, at least no one already enrolled has to drop out. But many other courses, especially for non-commissioned officers, last 20 weeks or less, after which the student usually returns to same unit they left, so those count as “temporary duty” - and TDY is funded on an ongoing basis. That means, said one ranking official, “you can cut them off and bring them back and save TDY dollars.”
“We’re still looking at the analytics,” the official told me. “Is it cheaper to leave you in place or bring you back?” As a rule of thumb, he suggested, a soldier who has completed 80 percent of a course might just skip the rest, be certified as fully trained (rounding up a little), and graduate early. At the other extreme, students who’ve just started will have to drop out and go home - if they can. In some cases, “they can’t go back there because there’s no job and no housing for them” at the base they came from, the official explained, and the base they’re supposed to go to next can’t accommodate them ahead of schedule…