Reframing Military Professionalism: Officers’ Justifications of the Master of Military Studies

Responding to shifting geopolitical dynamics and rising demands for academic legitimacy, the Danish Armed Forces have reformed Professional Military Education (PME) by launching the Master of Military Studies (MMS). This case study provides a bottom-up analysis of the MMS, introduced to modernize PME by means of civilian accreditation and modular learning. Employing a pragmatic sociological framework, we analyse officer students’ perspectives on academic motivation, career navigation and professional identity. Drawing on qualitative interviews and field observations, we identify two ideal types: the aspirational achiever, seeking upward mobility through strategic credentialing, and the pragmatic practitioner, maintaining employability and avoiding career stagnation. Despite their divergence, both view the MMS as an externally imposed requirement, misaligned with military needs, burdensome and insufficiently valued in promotion systems. These experiences reflect a deeper tension between modernization agendas and institutional expectations of loyalty, cohesion and structured progression. Our findings challenge prevailing PME reform models and call for approaches that integrate operational relevance with the profession’s core values rather than supplanting them with incongruent civilian metrics.