The USAWC Department of Distance Education (DDE) Program first began in 1968 as the Department of Corresponding Studies (DCS) Program. The first graduating class completed its studies in 1970. Beginning in 1986, the U.S. Army began awarding Military Education Level 1 (MEL-1) status to graduates of the program, the only non- resident senior service program to be so recognized by the Army. The American Council on Education recognizes up to 21 semester hours of graduate university credit for completion of the DDE Course. The program takes two years to complete and has an average student population of 300 in each year group. To date, over 5000 students have graduated from the program.

Students face a variety of challenges during their participation in the DDE Course. The course marks the most important career transition they have yet encountered. The fundamental challenge is to prepare and equip them to deal with national and international problems that have a number of characteristics in common. These problems by nature are complex and ambiguous. They lack precedent, seldom appearing in the form of problems previously encountered. They demand immediate attention and generally lack a clearly-defined stopping point. Often there is scant reward for success, while failure can affect the security or prosperity of the country.

The curriculum is designed to be provocative, demanding, and rigorous. There are at least two sides to every issue and often there are no school solutions. Students are encouraged to examine their own values, assumptions, and beliefs about the nature of war and peace, international and domestic affairs, and the ethics and utility of military power.

Students will have to work hard at the conceptual level throughout the course, researching and analyzing issues in depth to bring informed, critical judgment to every task encountered. The USAWC experience helps students to evolve from a world of competition, tactical orientation, and close supervision to a world characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity, one which relies on cooperation and consensus to achieve success. Joint and combined organizations, issues, and operations are paramount in the strategic environment.

The curriculum is designed to help cultivate the art of intelligent questioning. Unexamined acceptance of assumptions and the status quo is neither expected nor desired. High quality conceptual thinking can result only from close, detailed, reflective study in a wide range of military disciplines, and it can be done only by imaginative people who have trained themselves to think logically about tough problems. Logical thinking about complex and ambiguous issues is a goal during the two-year academic program.
Written submissions and resident-phase seminar sessions are the fundamental learning vehicles of the college. During seminar sessions, students face the challenge of submitting ideas for critical analysis by faculty instructors and student peers, both groups possessing an exceptional range of expertise. Similarly, students will find ample opportunity to exercise the fine art of discourse by engaging daily in local, tactful, and persuasive reasoning about ambiguous topics. Most academic work, however, is done as an individual, reading extensively from prepared texts and synthesizing the material into well organized submissions that focus on course authors' guidance and requirements. The academic program has been scheduled so that each activity contributes to the overall development of vigorous, informed, thoughtful, and effective leaders. The curriculum allows ample time for the reflection, individual study, and research essential for genuine intellectual growth.