The Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) program dates to the National Defense Act of 1916. ROTC built upon existing requirements at land-grant schools (colleges built on public lands that taught agriculture, mechanical arts, and military science) to offer military instruction. Before 1916 this instruction had been applied only haphazardly, often amounting to little more than drill instruction by local Civil War veterans. The 1916 act regularized standards for training and, as part of a more general preparedness movement for World War I, added most of the nation's prestigious colleges and universities. Until World War II, the program largely served to produce officers for the reserves, as its name implies.

In the 1940s and 1950s ROTC became a primary source for accessing large numbers of men into the officer corps of the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps. ROTC offered men a chance to fulfill their military service as...