Lt Ryker Morris: Yes he could be a college grad, but he also could have been a Mustang or ECP alum or Combat Field Commissioned. I dealt with all 3 and if he was still a Sgt when we had the Cowboy convo and CB was a 90 day wonder he could still have ended up a Lt. My vote is Enlisted Commissioning Program once he made E-5(Sgt) to 1stLt especially in country after 3 tours. Never saw any more of a college campus than a football stadium at most. You will find most Mustangs prefer to hang with Enlisted members rather than staying north of the 5th bulkhead.
That's not a thing. I haven't heard of a battlefield commission to officers' ranks since WW2. That went out of style with "Spec-5." Certainly, officers die and enlisted men have to take their place, but they don't get commissioned, they'd just be an E7 or E6 doing an O1 or O2s job. (For a little while, I was an E3 doing an E6's job.) But to receive an officer's commission,
you must be a college graduate. Even if you do it through OCS instead of West Point or ROTC, you still need a bachelors' degree at minimum. That said, I have no problem believing that a former officer can go rogue (no pun intended) and become an outlaw biker, especially if he's been betrayed by the government the way the protagonist here was. But the fact that he goes 13 chapters without even mentioning that just reeks of retcon.
EDIT: I also want to add here, I don't imagine outlaw bikers are too friendly to college boys, so I can definitely understand why he might want to keep his level of education and former military rank secret from them, but I remind you, this story is written form the omniscient point of view. We are privy to every characters' inner thoughts. So while I could understand the protagonist keeping his rank and education level out of his spoken words, he wouldn't keep it out of his thoughts! And we are reading both his thoughts and his words. So it just doesn't make sense. That dog
still doesn't hunt.