New Data Show Where Veterans Enroll, but Not How They Fare

Through a new tool designed to help GI Bill recipients navigate their college choices, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has for the first time released data that show exactly where those federal education benefits are used.

The data, released this month, are for the 2012 calendar year and were compiled through the VA’s GI Bill Comparison Tool. What the data show resembles the results of a 2011 U.S. Senate report and confirms the beliefs of some university officials and veterans’ advocates about where veterans are attending college.

The new data also highlight the gaps in evaluating how effectively GI Bill dollars are being spent—gaps that could be bridged by more-detailed data forthcoming from the VA.

“This is something that we feel should have been done a long time ago,” said Ryan Gallucci, deputy legislative director at the Veterans of Foreign Wars. “The difficult part now is we just don’t know how veterans are faring in higher education” because veteran-specific data have not yet been released.

Of the institutions eligible to receive GI Bill benefits in the VA’s data, the three campuses that enrolled the most GI Bill recipients in 2012 were for-profit institutions (see a table, below). Nine of the top 20 were for-profit. The University of Phoenix’s online program enrolled the most, with 28,261 beneficiaries.

While about 57 percent of the GI Bill recipients attended public institutions, about 27 percent went to for-profit campuses, double the rate of students in general, according to the latest figures from the National Center for Education Statistics.

The VA’s comparison tool presents users with an estimate of how much of an institution’s cost would be covered by the GI Bill, its overall graduation rate, and its overall student-loan default rate. The data apply to all chapters of the GI Bill, including the Post-9/11 GI Bill, the Montgomery GI Bill, the Reserve Education Assistance Program, and Vocational Rehabilitation.

The tool was part of President Obama’s 2012 executive order to equip military-service members, veterans, and their families with additional information. In January the government launched an online system allowing them to report problems with institutions.

The institutions that enrolled the most GI Bill recipients in 2012 have varying overall graduation rates (determined using data from the federal Integrated Postsecondary Educational Data System, or Ipeds), but a majority of veterans attended campuses where less than 25 percent of students received degrees. More than three out of four attended institutions with graduation rates of 50 percent or less.

Of the 10 campuses enrolling the most GI Bill recipients, Liberty University had the highest overall graduation rate, of 45.7 percent.

The average graduation rate for the top 10 campuses was only about 20 percent, and four of those institutions had student-loan default rates higher than their graduation rates.

High Enrollers

The data released by the VA echo those released in a U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee report that painted a revealing portrait of for-profit institutions.

The report, which focused on Post-9/11 GI Bill beneficiaries, showed that eight of the 10 universities accepting the most GI Bill dollars were for-profit institutions. The University of Maryland and the University of Texas were the only public institutions on the list. (Unlike the recent VA data, the Senate committee’s report categorized institutions as a whole, not by individual campuses. For example, it listed the Apollo Education Group, which owns the University of Phoenix, Western International University, and other institutions, as the leader in GI Bill recipient enrollment.)

Carrie Wofford, president and director of Veterans Education Success and a former senior counsel to the Senate committee, said she was not surprised about the institutions topping the list in the VA’s data.

For years the for-profit sector has defended itself against accusations that some of its members deceive GI Bill recipients to “boost their bottom line,” the Federal Trade Commission warned military veterans last fall.

For-profit colleges “are very focused on getting the GI Bill dollars. That they’re still getting it, is that surprising? No, that’s the business plan,” Ms. Wofford said.

Michael Dakduk, vice president for military and veterans affairs at the Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities, disputed the idea that aggressive recruiting had led to the higher percentage of GI Bill beneficiaries who enroll at for-profits.

“Nearly half of all student veterans have a family, and many of them have jobs in addition to going to school part time or full time and raising their family,” Mr. Dakduk said, adding that institutions that offer flexible programs generally resonate best with veterans and their families.

More-Specific Data

Though the comparison tool shows where most GI Bill recipients pursue degrees, it does not offer veteran-specific graduation rates or loan-default rates. The graduation rate listed in the tool uses Ipeds data, which counts only first-time, full-time students who did not transfer. Students pursuing a bachelor’s degree must graduate within six years to be counted.

While the University of Maryland University College had the fourth-largest population of GI Bill recipients in 2012, it had an overall graduation rate of only 4.3 percent. But of UMUC’s enrollment, less than 1 percent were counted in the Ipeds graduation rate because they are not first-time, first-year students, said James H. Selbe, senior vice president for military partnerships at UMUC. About 55 percent of the institution’s students are affiliated with the military, he said.

Likewise, a University of Phoenix spokesman, Ryan Rauzon, said most students at his institution transfer in with credits and aren’t captured in the Ipeds graduation rate. For that reason, the VA tool’s listed graduation rate “is straight inaccurate,” he said.

Graduation-rate and loan-default data are “not necessarily the strongest measure of student-veteran graduation or student debt,” William Hubbard, a spokesman for Student Veterans of America, said in an email.

Mr. Obama’s executive order required the Department of Defense, the VA, and the Department of Education to develop improved student-outcome measures, including completion rates for veterans.

The VA has announced that a forthcoming phase of the comparison tool is expected to display outcome measures specific to veterans and service members for each institution, along with the ability for users to calculate personalized GI Bill benefits and to compare multiple colleges at the same time.

The VA did not respond to The Chronicle’s requests for additional information about the coming changes.

Separate from the VA’s tracking, Student Veterans of America is also developing an analysis of student-veteran retention and completion rates by tracking the academic outcomes of more than one million student veterans, according to a news release.

Mr. Hubbard said the data, expected to become available in June, may include other academic outcomes for veterans, such as student debt. Although the information will not be specific to individual institutions, Mr. Hubbard said the data will be the first to home in on veterans’ academic outcomes.

Corrections (2/27/2014, 7:39 a.m. and 10:23 a.m.): This article originally misstated the nature of an online system to report problems with institutions. The system was created by government agencies including the Departments of Defense and of Veterans Affairs, not just the VA, and is intended for the use of military-service members and their families, not just veterans. The article also misnamed a for-profit higher-education company. It is the Apollo Education Group, not the Apollo Group. And the article misstated the date of a Senate report on veterans and for-profit education, and included the wrong link; the report was in 2011, not 2012. The article has been updated to reflect those corrections.

Correction (2/27/2014, 1:39 p.m.): The Posse Foundation is not involved in developing an analysis of student-veteran retention and completion rates. The article also mistakenly stated that the Institute for Veterans and Military Families and the Veterans of Foreign Wars were engaged in an effort to track student data. The article has been updated to reflect those corrections.

Colleges That Enroll the Most Students on the GI Bill