So if you knew the material on day one they'd just immediately consider you done? Like if I pretrained on the material and then went to the program and asked them to determine if I was to the readiness they expected at the end, they'd do it?
Genuinely doubt it. But I guess it's possible. The pay is shit enough that the guys who would smash it are doing something else.
> So if you knew the material on day one they'd just immediately consider you done?
The material is largely classified, so there is no way to "pretrain" it.
The first 6 months to a year of the program is not self-paced, it's semi-traditional classroom learning except its 8 hours of lecture a day, 5 days a week. Homework and studying are done after lecture and the number of required study hours are mandatory depending on the sailor's GPA. It is very common for students to spend 60-80 hours a week in the classroom. You could think of this as an enforced minimum speed limit. The first year is spent teaching students how to learn at all-gas-no-breaks speed.
After that, the next year to 18 months of a nuke's education are spent in a qualification program that is entirely self-paced. You study the material independently, and when you feel you have a solid grasp on it you request an evaluation (think technical interview) about the subject. How fast or slow one moves through these interviews is entirely up to the individual sailor. But too slow and the sailor will be dropped from the program, thus why it's important to train them how to learn quickly.
Anecdotally, after the nuke program, university (NYU Tandon in my case) is trivial. The workload is nothing compared to the expectations of the nuke pipeline.
Does that also apply to the instructors at Nuclear Power School? Because one member of my undergraduate class became a NPS instructor, and, well, not to mince words but if he was the best then I must be off the charts....
Their qualification program is similar, but the Direct Input Limited Duty Officers recruited straight to instructor duty typically take over a single subject of classroom instruction and aren't expected to fully understand all subjects in the entire qualification process.
More saliently, the nuclear pipeline is not made up of "the best". It is ubiquitously composed of academic rejects. College dropouts, "smart but lazy"s, clever misfits, and a few enterprising criminals. The kind of unfulfilled talent that comes a dime a dozen.
The Navy learned that with enough discipline and a tolerance for high washout rates, you can get "greatness" for pennies on the dollar by making it yourself from the raw cuttings left behind by America's higher education system.
Genuinely doubt it. But I guess it's possible. The pay is shit enough that the guys who would smash it are doing something else.