Education

Today’s job market isn’t great, and it’s even worse for veterans transitioning into the workforce (see article “Veterans’ Job Forecast: Partly Cloudy”). These new veterans should be aware, however, of the strong link between employment and a person’s level of education. According to the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), the 2011 unemployment rate of post-9/11 or “Gulf War II” veterans with a high school diploma was 16.4 percent, compared to 6.4 percent for veterans with any college-level education.

With this in mind, Congress has enacted a generous package of education benefits for service members and veterans – primarily the Post-9/11 GI Bill, which has been amended twice since its first enactment in 2008. Service members who have served 36 months of active duty are eligible for the full benefit, which, depending on where one lives and goes to school, can include:

• For a period of up to 36 months, up to $17,500 in annual tuition and fee assistance at a public or private institution of higher learning – enough to cover the cost of an education at the vast majority of colleges and universities. Students who want to attend a private school that costs more should look into the VA’s Yellow Ribbon Program, which pays up to half the total amount of fees and tuition if participating institutions agree to pay the other half.
• A monthly living/housing allowance, based on the military’s Basic Allowance for Housing (BAH) for an E-5 (sergeant) with dependents, and adjusted according to where the student lives and the “rate of pursuit” – the number of credit hours in a student’s course load. A full-time student living in downtown Manhattan, for example, may be paid a living allowance higher than $2,800, while another living in Mansfield, Ohio, would be paid about $765.
• A stipend of up to $1,000 per year for the purchase of books and supplies.
• Under certain stipulations, a one-time rural relocation benefit payment of $500 to help cover the cost of moving to a school that’s at least 500 miles from home.
• To accommodate the growing contingent of students pursuing a degree or certificate online or through correspondence, the Post-9/11 GI Bill offers a benefit of up to $8,500 annually for tuition and fees. These students are also entitled to an adjusted living allowance of half the national average BAH for anE-5 with dependents – in the 2011 school year, an amount of about $673.50 a month.
• Support for students in non-college degree programs such as truck driving school, EMT certification programs, and others. The VA will pay the same benefit as at degree-granting colleges and universities: the net cost for in-state tuition and fees at public programs; for private and foreign programs, the actual net cost or $17,500, whichever is less. The VA will also provide up to $83 per month for books and supplies.
• For many on-the-job training and apprenticeship programs, such as firefighting, union carpentry, or hospitality management, the VA will pay a monthly benefit based on the amount of time spent in the program, and up to $83 per month for books and supplies.
• For flight training programs, the VA will pay the actual net cost of tuition annually or $10,000, whichever is less.
• For the cost of taking licensure, certification, or placement tests such as the SAT®, GRE®, LSAT, and CLEP® – or even a state barber’s certification exam – the VA will reimburse up to $2,000 of the cost of taking the test.

 

Post-9/11 GI Bill benefits have also been expanded to cover various non-degree-granting programs, on-the-job and apprenticeship training, and flight training programs; to check whether a certain program is covered, consult the VA’s GI Bill website: www.gibill.va.gov.

Length of service, location of school, type of program, and enrollment level are all factors in determining the amount of the GI Bill benefit. Tuition and fees are paid directly to the school by the VA, while the monthly housing allowance and book/supply stipend are paid to the individual. Under certain conditions, the GI Bill benefit may be transferred to a spouse or dependent.

A word of caution: Online and correspondence degree programs, many of which are offered through private for-profit colleges, are increasingly popular, and many offer a quality education, but in recent years, some for-profit institutions have been discredited as unscrupulous privateers, looking to grab up market share of the generous Post-9/11 GI Bill. The results of a two-year U.S. Senate investigation, released in the summer of 2012, revealed that many of these colleges recruited service members heavily, collected GI Bill benefits for tuition rates that often exceeded those of public colleges, and then offered veteran students little support. Among 30 of the largest for-profit higher education providers, the report revealed, there were 35,000 recruiters – but only about 3,500 career advisers and 12,400 people working in student support services. As a result, some for-profit schools have veteran student withdrawal rates as high as 70 percent. Prospective students should do their homework, even before enrolling, and get answers to these questions: What percentage of veteran students complete their degree requirements at the institution? What percentage drop out before completing? What type of academic and career support services are available to veteran students – and what is the ratio of support personnel to students?

 

College Credit for Service

Conventionally, a college education is a four-year undertaking, but the GI Bill’s three-year benefit doesn’t necessarily leave students a year short of a degree. Without realizing it, many service members have already earned college credit equivalents through their leadership, supervision, and management training. Since World War II, the American Council on Education (ACE)has helped service members translate their service records into military transcripts that are readable to the academic world. ACE Assistant Vice President for Lifelong Learning Jim Selbe, a Marine, estimates his service record earned him 60 credit hours, or three to four years in the classroom, at a price tag of $15,000 to $20,000.

To begin the process of earning college credit for service, service members should contact the appropriate organization. For members of the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps, the ACE website has links to information on how to acquire the Army ACE Registry Transcript System (AARTS) transcript or the Sailor/Marine ACE Registry Transcript (SMART). For Air Force service members, the translation of service into college credit is typically performed by Air University: Community College of the Air Force, at Maxwell-Gunter Air Force Base in Montgomery, Ala. Coast Guard members can request a transcript from the Coast Guard Institute.

With these transcripts in hand, service members should research which institutions will accept units from their military transcript as transfer credits. A good bet would be one of the nearly 1,900 Servicemembers Opportunity Colleges (www.soc.aascu.org) – higher learning institutions that have formally agreed to award credits, when appropriate, for military training.

Service members and veterans may also earn credit before enrollment by participating in DoD’s DANTES [Defense Activity for Non-Traditional Education Support] credit-through-examination programs, which include the 38 Subject Standardized Tests (DSSTs) available at www.getcollegecredit.com. Many separating service members will be additionally eligible for educational benefits from their respective state governments, and should check out the websites of their state veterans agencies.

For all the challenges of active service, the multitude of concerns uncorked on separating service members, including work, education, and finances, can still seem overwhelming. It may not be easy, in today’s economy, to find the opportunities a veteran might hope for, or even expect – but it should be easy, for post-9/11 veterans, to find many grateful people, in the government and in the private sector, who want to help.

This story was first published in The Year in Veterans Affairs & Military Medicine 2012-2013 Edition.