The idea that everyone in Starfleet is an officer was silly and impractical as reflected by the fact that they never could depict such a thing. Simply put, you need an officer and enlisted divide in order to function.
Now, there should not be segregation between the two, and indeed evidence would suggest there isn't, O'Brien said he was offered an officer's commission which he refused, but there still needs to be divide regardless and indeed you'll find in every workplace environment there are similar divides, IE the medical profession has doctors and nurses, and so on. It's simply how shit is done.
The concept of having two seperate schools & ranks systems along with different training is based on historical British Classes. It's antiquated, an old concept, and obsolete.
I'm in agreement to this Op-Ed:
Bad Idea: The Officer-Enlisted Divide
One Hierarchy, one set of schooling, one set of ranks. "Everybody is an officer" and goes to the same school for the same things. No divide.
Those who want to go up to Management / Command level, should be given the chance.
Everybody who can study/qualify/train for it, shall get the chance to do so eventually.
That's why there is a Command Track that StarFleet officer gradually goes down towards.
But before they get to be in Command, they have to train in certain specialized positions before they get to that point.
If you want to be a generalist, you should be allowed to do so.
If you want to be a specialist, you should be allowed to do so.
That should be what StarFleet Academy gives you, a very wide breadth of ability to learn and to gain skills to be useful to the service.
Not everybody wants to become "Upper-Management", some do, some rather continue their field of speciality.
That's true in the Public/Private sector as well.
Nobody should be forced into Management. There's largely no point in that.
That's the future that I want to see depicted in StarFleet.
Starfleet is not a police force. And while we can spend all day arguing over what Starfleet is or isn't, one thing we can all agree on is that it is a shipping service, since they do work on ships. And those who work on ships need the officer and enlisted divide, with the officers being the ones in a supervisory role and the enlisted doing the actual grunt work. That's just logic.
That's a incredibly archaic British Model to raise your force on.
StarFleet and the UFP should move beyond that.
