OTTAWA—Military leaders are rallying to the defence of the Royal Military College, Canada’s premier school for young officers, after an auditor general’s report concluded the school turns out graduates at a high cost but falls short on teaching military and leadership skills.

In a report Tuesday, the auditor general took aim at the storied institution, criticizing its lack of focus on military training.

While cadets are meant to become leaders in the armed forces, military training takes a back seat to academic subjects and most students see such training as “irrelevant” and a “poor use of time,” according to a report from the watchdog.

And incidents of misconduct at the school, located in Kingston, show that it is falling down in its mission to produce officers with strong leadership skills.

“The academic environment at the college does not consistently support the teaching of military conduct and ethical behaviour,” Auditor General Michael Ferguson said.

“The college must re-establish its focus as a military training institution, so that it can produce the leaders the Canadian Armed Forces require,” he said.

Yet the Royal Military College (RMC) comes at a steep price tag. The auditor general report concluded that the college is the “most costly way” to educate future military officers; it costs some $40,000 more a year than a civilian university does, the report found.

Responding to the report, Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan, who serves as chancellor of the school, praised its “long history of producing well-rounded leaders.”

He said the “unique” nature of the college — where cadets are expected to work on military skills, physical fitness and bilingualism in addition to academic work — adds to its costs. But he said the defence department would look at ways to reducing its operating costs.

Senior officers defended the school, saying its graduates — immersed in military culture for four years — emerge better prepared to quickly take on leadership roles as young officers.

“There is a premium to make that happen and to equip them for that . . . that is part of what the military college does,” said Rear-Admiral Luc Cassivi, Commander, Canadian Defence Academy, the college’s headquarters.

“The mentoring and the coaching that happens here is important . . . we would want all of our officers to come through this college,” Cassivi said in an interview.

Cassivi said that more than half of all senior officers in the armed forces are graduates of military colleges. “Over the term of a career, there is an impact.”

But Cassivi and Brig.-Gen. Sebastien Bouchard, RMC's commandant, conceded that the school needs to do a better job of showing how such investments pay off.

“There is a cost to all of this and I guess we were not good at defining what is the added value of RMC,” Bouchard said.

The audit examined whether the college produces quality officers at a reasonable cost. It also looked at whether National Defence ensured proper conduct of the officer cadets and staff. The investigation concluded that the school comes up short.

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For starters, military training takes a back seat to academic programs, the auditor general concluded, echoing a concern that has existed for almost two decades.

“We also found that there was no clear, measurable standard for leadership qualities and ethical military behaviour that graduates were required to demonstrate before receiving their commissions,” it said.

Cadets spend up to 53 hours per week on academics, nine hours on physical fitness, just over six hours on military training, and four hours on study of a second language, according to an analysis by the auditor general.

“We noted that officer cadets consistently viewed military training as low-value, irrelevant, and a poor use of time,” the report found.

The auditor general recommends that National Defence “clearly define and strengthen” military training of cadets that is “relevant and practical.

“RMC was established as a military training institution, and the needs of the Canadian Armed Forces should be reflected more in its operations,” it said.

The auditor general also takes aim at the bottom line; it notes that the cost of educating a student at RMC is twice as much as it is at other small universities. RMC’s operating expenditures were about $91.9 million in 2014–15, around $55,000 per full-time student, the highest in the country.

That’s in part because the school has 192 full-time professors, 156 of them academic and 36 military, for just 1,668 students.

Yet the auditor general shot down National Defence’s claim that the higher cost was because of higher standards set for RMC graduates. “National Defence could not demonstrate that these standards resulted in more effective military officers,” the report found.

Instead the watchdog said that the college needs “effective governance and clear leadership.” And it put National Defence on notice, saying it needs to demonstrate that RMC’s higher costs are “required, reasonable, and produce better officers.”

The auditor general criticizes the school for not providing cadets with “adequate training in leadership and in the proper conduct expected of future officers.”