Military Education Benefits
Navigating the many military education reimbursement programs can be an adventure, but these military education experts tell you how to get your money.
by Marty Levine

It never ceases to surprise me how little veterans know about their benefits,” says Noelle Atwell.

But she understands why. Atwell is director of veteran and disabled student affairs at University of Maryland University College (www.umuc.edu), one of the university’s 11 branches. UMUC has 90,000 students worldwide, half of whom are active duty military. She also has a son in the Marines. A few years ago, she watched an armed services recruiter demonstrate his pitch to prospects.

“I won’t say that the recruiter wasn’t truthful,” Atwell says. “They just don’t give all these young men and women all the information they need.”

Then, on the other end of their service, just before leaving, these veterans are bombarded with too much information about their benefits, all at once.

The result is confusion: “When they arrive at an institution of higher education, they are unaware of how it works, how to get it started,” Atwell says.

For instance, like many schools, UMUC bills its students for the entire semester’s tuition almost immediately after they register for each semester’s classes. But the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) pays benefits monthly — and then only at the successful completion of each month’s schoolwork. Some schools will delay their bills if they’re sure VA benefits are coming. But that isn’t always possible.

“It’s a benefit that they’ve earned,” Atwell says of military education benefits, “but it’s also something they should be really familiar with before they start to use it.”

By far the education benefit active duty military use most often is the Tuition Assistance benefit, which provides up to $250 a credit for undergraduate courses ($292 for graduate courses) or up to $4,500 a year for approved students and programs. The Tuition Assistance “Top Up” program provides additional tuition help when the Tuition Assistance program benefits are below the cost of tuition.

For veterans, the traditional G.I. Bill benefits under Chapter 30 are most often used, since they cover everything from four-year institutions of higher learning to job training and flight instruction after the service member’s initial $1,200 contribution.

Along with experts on the use of military benefits at other institutions, Atwell finds that veteran students at University of Maryland University College need to learn some of the basics of these programs.

For instance, if the student has declared a major, he or she can only receive benefits for courses required by the student’s degree program.

And, Atwell adds, “If you’re full-time, the monthly benefit is the same no matter where you go to school. That $1,075 goes a whole lot further at a community college than it does at Princeton.” For the average veteran student, who is working at the same time, “it’s probably a wise decision to start at the community college level and later transfer to a four-year institution,” she says.

She also urges veteran students to look into non-military financial-aid options at the university, such as Pell Grants and student loans, if they have a hard time meeting tuition bills.

Since UMUC is located in the Washington metro area, they have classes in many locations “and always at the military installations in the area,” which anyone can attend. UMUC’s administrative offices in Europe and Asia help provide classes exclusively to military and dependents overseas. The school offers 29 bachelor’s degrees, 19 master’s degrees, 80 certificates and a doctoral program.

Today, half of UMUC’s students are active-duty military, including online students, who are “our biggest enrollment, and an enrollment that is growing,” Atwell says.

It helps that UMUC charges only in-state tuition for all active duty (and anyone who graduated from a Maryland high school). If active duty go on leave or are discharged, “we do make every attempt to keep them as a student” at UMUC and finish their degree, she adds.

This fall, UMUC has 2,200 students using their VA benefits to take classes in the states. The majority are using Chap. 30 benefits.

“We have enrollment specialists who are the first contact for students,” Atwell reports. “They really help students walk through the maze of information and paperwork on the [VA] Web site.” Once registered, “a lot of their contact is with their academic advisor.”

UMUC also has 400 veterans using Chapter 31 benefits currently: the Vocational Rehabilitation program. Chapter 31 is set up to help with higher education or vocational technology programs; the VA determines which is right for the student. Sometimes a veteran’s disabilities don’t even have an impact on their educational program, “but sometimes they do,” which is why Atwell’s office handles both military and disability issues.

Even school employees married to veterans can be confused about their benefits. Atwell recalls the veteran husband of one UMUC employee who had been told, falsely, that he had to be a full-time student to be eligible for G.I. Bill benefits. He had already been attending UMUC for several semesters both half- and quarter-time when the error was discovered.

Luckily, UMUC was able to get his previous two semester benefits retroactively. But, explains Atwell, “retroactive certification is not always possible.”

Of course, benefits do vary depending on the number of classes taken.

Vets be Careful
“Please be careful,” cautions Donna Cooper, director of financial aid and VA certifying official at Excelsior College (www.excelsior.edu/), which describes itself as the country’s first virtual institution of higher education. “If you go under half-time rate, you’re not going to get what you thought you were going to get” when you were full- or half-time.

On the other hand, students don’t need to go full-time just to make sure they get all their benefits, since the VA counts four months as a half-time student as only two months of educational benefits use.

Still, Cooper adds, students who go below half-time only get reimbursed for the actual cost of tuition — they don’t get full-time Chap. 30 benefits as a quarter-time student.

Excelsior has 27,000 students, 35 percent of whom are active duty or Guard and Reserve members. Another 7 percent are veterans. Cooper has a great deal of experience offering tips to its students with service experience.

In Excelsior’s last year, ending June 30, 2006, the college filed over 1,000 claims with the VA’s One system, which can certify a student online, allows the school to confirm this certification and also for both parties to track it. (Remember to put your Social Security number on every page of every form, she reminds students.) The college had 9,900 students use Tuition Assistance to cover distance learning in that same year. And during the college’s most recent quarter, ending Sept. 30, Copper’s office has filed 379 claims for 282 students for more than $400,000 in benefits.

“We really do cater to the military,” Cooper says, from Excelsior’s flexibility of course offerings to its help in filling out forms. “We really enjoy working with the military.”

“A lot of our active duty members … are using Tuition Assistance,” she reports. “But you’d be surprised how many are using Chapter 30,” both because use of Tuition Assistance can add time to an enlistment stint, and because they may have exceeded the Tuition Assistance cap.

“Since Tuition Assistance doesn’t cover everything, they may want to use the Top-Up program to cover additional dollars,” she adds.

“Sometimes a student is eligible for two benefits,” she notes — Chapter 16.06 benefits for reservists re-called to active duty (if they’ve been in the Reserve for 6 years), and Chapter 30 benefits if they’ve been on active duty. But that particular student would want to use Chapter 30 first, because it gives the highest benefit.

Another benefit gaining increasing use is Chapter 16.07, the entitlement for reservists called to Iraq. Eligibility is established with three straight months overseas, but the highest benefits are paid to those with two years in Iraq.

Right now, the VA is going back to those who matriculated as far back as 2003 to give out additional dollars to those who might have gone overseas after attending college.

“It’s actually causing a backlog in their systems,” Cooper says.

Tuition Assistance Start Dates can be Problematic
Jim Sweizer, vice president of federal programs at online American Military University (www.amu.apus.edu/index.htm), spent 33 years in the Air Force before joining AMU last year. He has a wealth of experience in guiding service members’’ use of benefits, having been chief of the Air Force’s voluntary education program beginning in 1999 and managing the Air Force Tuition Assistance Program.

Still, there are quirks in the system that even an experienced hand encounters. “At the beginning of every fiscal year, we have a problem with the services,” since tuition assistance is authorized by fiscal year. AMU classes have monthly starts, and some services won’t authorize tuition assistance in one fiscal year for courses that take place in the next.

AMU is one of the largest higher education providers to armed service members. It has 19,000 students, about 85 percent of whom are active duty, Reserves and Guard. The predominant financial aid mechanism they use is Tuition Assistance. But there are other aid sources available, he adds.

“Many lower-ranking individuals who are married and have dependent children are usually eligible to get federal financial aid” as well, Sweizer says. That usually means Pell Grants, which don’t need to be paid back.

“A unique feature with us,” Sweizer says about AMU, “is that we have a book grant for undergraduates.” At some low-cost colleges, books can be costlier than tuition. He estimates that AMU spends $3 million a year on undergrad book grants.

“We’re really flexible,” Sweizer says. “We understand the benefits. Unlike most of the universities, we have an outreach team” — composed of mostly veterans — “whose arms reach across the country.”

Not every veteran uses the G.I. Bill, he notes. “Historically, the usage rate for veterans has been 60 percent,” he says. “Forty percent lose it after their 10 years are up, which is really a travesty.”

One part of the VA system it is crucial to use, says Mary Jane Snyder, is the VA’s W.A.V.E Web site (Web Automated Verification of Enrollment, at (www.gibill.va.gov/wave).

Snyder is director of Duquesne University’s Military Education Programs in the School of Leadership and Professional Advancement (www.leadership.duq.edu/mil). The Pittsburgh-based institution offers one undergraduate and five graduate degrees geared to adults returning to school. The school today has more than 300 students involved in military as active duty, Guard or Reserve members or veterans. Duquesne offers these students a 50 percent tuition reduction, taking the per-credit fees down to $250 for undergrads and $292 for grads, which matches available G.I. Bill benefits.

“They must, must, must follow the W.A.V.E. procedure in order to keep their funds uninterrupted,” says Snyder of military students. “If they’ve made a mistake, 90 percent of the time it’s because they haven’t taken their course information to the certifying official in the school, or they haven’t completed the W.A.V.E. procedure.”

Most of the school’s active duty military students use Tuition Assistance. “We generally recommend that all military students who are active duty save their G.I. Bill for their graduate work or doctorate,” she says.

Overall, she adds, when using the G.I. Bill benefits, “What you need to make sure is that you apply very early, once you have identified the school and the program. You need to know that the program they have selected is veteran-approved.” All six Duquesne programs in her school, of course, are veteran-approved.

“In Duquesne’s program, we have the students certify that they are using the G.I. Bill for each individual class, at the beginning of each class,” in order to make sure the school’s registrar has time to confirm this information, and students can get their money. If they don’t, and registration doesn’t confirm, they may not get their money.

Work with Your Education Officer
“It’s very important that you work with the education services officer at the base,” says Tim Lehmann, “and get everything worked out before you jump into the educational program.”

Lehmann is director of financial aid on online Capella University (www.capella.edu/), which has more than 17,000 students, about 14 percent of whom are receiving military benefits — either Chapter 30 benefits or Tuition Assistance.

For active duty students, a lot of the benefits are administered through their bases. “We wanted to make sure we had programs running that would assist them in doing both [school and service], and help them navigate through the process,” Lehmann says. “We took a lot of activity off their plates and did a lot of the work for them” at Capella, from assisting with paperwork to directly billing the base instead of the students.

The school maintains a veterans’ services team as a single point of contact for military students, and offers service members a 10-15 percent discount on tuition.

As for retired military, Capella certifies a year’s worth of enrollment (as opposed to once per quarters). “That allows the veteran to continue to get their monthly stipend without us having to do anything more on our end,” he says.

Capella’s online offerings have been attracting a lot more veterans using vocational rehabilitation benefits lately, Lehmann notes. “You don’t have to do the traditional college route,” he says. Online, “there’s not as many accommodations you have to make.

“When you’re dealing with the government,” he concludes, “the more prepared you are the better.” It’s best to look for schools with military students already in attendance. Such schools, he says, “understand the dynamics and have the support services available.”