I'm not saying the below concept is good, the right way to do it, or anything like that...but:
The more I mull over this whole silliness in my head, the AAD is only a "pay-to-play" item. For example, a local senior leader recently said that he looked at all the PRFs for primary job expertise first and then AAD and PME in res. When asked about whether the school mattered, he told us straight up that no one cares about the school as it is simply "did you do it or not?" He did say he always likes to see interesting and useful degrees.
I think what we should try to force as an officer corps is the concept of "right time, right education." To that end, I think we should focus on ditching the SOS correspondence and SOS residence debacle that we currently have. Instead, SOS correspondence should be a 100% completion item that awards BDE credit and a Master's degree. Perhaps this means the course is 1-2 years long, and would be structured very similar to the current ACSC OLMP, but the goal would be to take a newly promoted Captain and check all the boxes. It would also allow a return to primary job focus for the first four years (yes, many of those years are currently taken up by pipeline training like UPT etc). It would still be a choice for people to do it, but conceptually, it could be an equalizer that helps with primary job expertise for promotion and so on. I would only call it SOS correspondence (maybe even a new name) because it would be a military arts/science degree. It would be a SOS residence pre-requisite...yet would not overlap in content, as I don't think we should practice bleeding.
I guess my ideal progression would be:
Lt -- Focus on job (UFT or other basic training, IQT, MQT, etc), minimized additional responsibilities that increase after some time in the primary job.
Capt -- Focus on expertise (Instr, Eval, etc), additional responsibilities (show leadership potential), "SOS correspondence" that gives BDE credit (in case you can't go in res for extenuating circumstances) and AAD credit.
Maj -- Depth + Breadth (career broadening etc), additional duties, ACSC (yes this program needs to be fixed as well).
LtCol+ -- I haven't thought that far on "fixing" the career progression.