Bringing its data-driven approach to the GI Bill, Google announced on Wednesday that it would provide $3.2-million to support national research to assess student veterans’ academic performance and determine what kinds of campus-based programs were most effective in helping them.
Four organizations—Student Veterans of America, the Posse Foundation, Syracuse University’s Institute for Veterans and Military Families, and Veterans of Foreign Wars—will receive grants to carry out the research and expand existing services for veterans. The combined research, some of which is already under way, will include a national analysis of graduation and retention rates, along with a qualitative look at support services and policies for student veterans.
The tech company announced the grants, which are part of its Global Impact Awards program, at the Army and Navy Club here.
The results will be much anticipated. Four years into the Post-9/11 GI Bill, more than one million veterans have used the education program, at a cost so far of about $34-billion in tuition and benefits. Yet as the number of veterans enrolled in college continues to swell, calls for reliable data on their academic performance have grown: No national statistics exist to demonstrate how well, or how poorly, users of the new GI Bill fare in their studies.
In the absence of hard numbers, assumptions about veterans’ experiences in college have occasionally sparked debates. Last year a controversial statistic that 88 percent of veterans drop out of college in their first year went viral within the veteran community. Student Veterans of America, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, and others disputed the claim. Pleas intensified for trustworthy metrics grounded in scholarly research, not anecdote or speculation.
The rocky budgetary environment for some federal programs, meanwhile, has advocates on guard that any perceived abuse or waste in the GI Bill could lead to cuts in its funding.
Quest for Hard Data
Student Veterans of America, or SVA, received the largest of the new grants from Google, for $1.5-million. With help from the Department of Veterans Affairs and the National Student Clearinghouse, SVA will carry out what is believed to be the first systematic analysis of veterans’ graduation and retention rates. The group expects to roll out its first wave of findings in January, and would like to repeat the analysis annually.
Beyond the basic metrics of graduation and retention, SVA will also do research to determine what kinds of policies and services colleges have (or don’t have) for veterans.
“What we’d like to do is prove empirically that the best practices we are putting forth are the ones that actually produce results,” said D. Wayne Robinson, president and executive director of the organization and an Army veteran.
Another recipient was the Posse Foundation, which recently began its Veterans Posse Initiative at Vassar College. The foundation received $1.2-million to expand its efforts to reach more veterans and recruit new college partners to host “posses” for veterans on their campuses.
Researchers at the Institute for Veterans and Military Families, at Syracuse University, will join the student-veterans group to carry out additional research. The institute received $400,000 from Google to do qualitative research on college campuses, as well as a survey of current service members who are about to make the transition to civilian life and are considering college.
Veterans of Foreign Wars received $100,000 to continue its current work in identifying the challenges student veterans confront on campuses.
The organizations’ combined research efforts are meant to give colleges and universities a reliable road map for helping veterans.
Alex Horton, an Army veteran who served in Iraq, said during a panel discussion at Wednesday’s event that colleges and veterans still have much to learn from each other. Both could benefit from some guidance, he said.
“We don’t know how to talk to them, but they also don’t know how to talk to us,” said Mr. Horton, who will graduate this spring from Georgetown University. “It’s kind of like a strange dance, and not everyone knows the steps.”
Bridging a Divide
At the Institute for Veterans and Military Families, programs and policy research are often aimed at bridging the divide between civilians and those who serve, or have served, in the military. The new research project will be no exception. J. Michael Haynie, the institute’s founder and executive director, and his colleagues plan to survey college presidents, faculty members, and administrators on their knowledge of student veterans and how veterans’ experiences often differ from those of traditional students.
A later phase of the research will turn the tables and ask veterans—as well as current service members about to leave the military—what they think about higher education. What do they know about different degree programs? How do they feel about online education, compared with brick-and-mortar programs? What scares them about making the transition to college—or going at all?
Mr. Haynie says he often thinks about veterans of World War II and how transformative the original GI Bill was for them. More than two million enrolled in college, among them future presidents and Supreme Court justices.
“I think that potential exists again,” he said in a recent interview. “But honestly, it will never be realized if we don’t empower colleges and universities to take the steps necessary to make their campuses inclusive of veterans.”
Thousands more veterans may still find their way to the nation’s colleges: With American troops largely out of Iraq, and soon to depart Afghanistan altogether, many service members will soon begin their transition out of uniform. Some federal officials estimate that nearly three-quarters will use the GI Bill to jump-start that shift to civilian life.
The time is right, Mr. Haynie said, for an expansive, nuanced look at the impact so far of the GI Bill—and what still needs to be done to make it better.
“In a perfect world, we would have loved to have these insights the day they signed the GI Bill,” Mr. Haynie said. “But you need to push those veterans out in the world and onto our campuses and have them explore higher education in order to really have the research opportunity to turn around and look at where are the lessons learned.”
