The Business Case for Enrolling Military Veterans

Gerard Gaskin

When Michelle Dingee began her metamorphosis from a military veteran to a college student five years ago, she felt lost. At age 32, she was much older than most of the students at Broward College, a two-year institution in Florida. What’s more, she had spent 14 years far from a college campus, serving in England and Turkey, among other places, as an Air Force medic.

The transition was jarring.

“I was like a machine — awkward, lonely. I felt like I lacked social skills,” she says. “I went to class and to work, and then just went home. I went through a bout of depression.”

But slowly, things began to change in her favor. Her adviser at Broward, a retired Army officer himself, connected her with a work-study job helping her fellow veterans, “so they didn’t go through as many bumps as I did,” she says.

Both at Broward and at Florida International University, where Dingee is now on track for a bachelor’s degree in nursing science, she availed herself of new veterans’ centers that offer advising, counseling, tutoring, and a place where veterans can meet and feel less isolated.

Centers like that are key to recent efforts by some nonprofit colleges to recruit and serve student veterans. Having for many years largely ceded that market to for-profit institutions, they now have a strong incentive to enroll them: As population shifts threaten the solvency of tuition-dependent colleges especially, serving veterans offers an opportunity to learn which support programs might work best for the adult learners that colleges are eager to enroll.

“Demographic research tells us colleges have to compete in the adult space,” says J. Michael Haynie, executive director of the Institute for Veterans and Military Families at Syracuse University, one of the leaders in innovating to serve formerly enlisted students. “We not only owe it to veterans, but it makes good business sense for us as well.”

To see that, college leaders have to overcome common misapprehensions about veterans.

A Culture Gap

For the first few years after 2009, when the Post-9/11 GI Bill of Rights went into effect, aggressive recruiting pitches by for-profit colleges attracted a high number of military veterans. (GI Bill benefits are exempt from the rule that prohibits for-profit colleges from getting more than 90 percent of their operating revenue from federal student aid.) As many of those institutions shut down or saw attention brought to their low graduation rates, their share of student veterans dropped: from around 37 percent in 2010 to 20 percent in 2018.

Public colleges, where the Post-9/11 GI Bill can pay up to full resident tuition and fees, are picking up the slack, but private colleges have been slower to do so, say current and former private-college leaders. Public colleges enrolled 60 percent of veterans last year; private institutions, only 20 percent.

Jared Lyon, president of the Student Veterans of America, an advocacy organization that maintains 1,524 chapters on campuses around the nation, says three factors — a lack of military experience among college leaders, an unreasonable fear of the mental health needs veterans may bring with them, and assumptions about lower-income learners, who make up the bulk of those who serve — have helped create a bias against student veterans.

“A widely held school of thought has said, Thank you for your service. But if you had been smart enough to get into college, you would have been there already,” says Lyon.

In fact, graduation rates and GPAs of the approximately one million veterans on U.S. campuses are higher than those of traditional students. Businesses come to campus in droves to recruit them.

“They’re helping universities solve real problems,” says Lyon, “and not just by increasing enrollment and generating income.”

But the lack of understanding can work both ways. “Veterans often don’t think to apply to selective private schools,” says Catharine Bond Hill, a former president of Vassar College who is now managing director at Ithaka S+R. “Some of them would make great students at these schools, but there seems to be a disconnect.” Nearly two in three veterans are first-generation college students, who may have trouble seeing themselves on a traditional campus.

Success at Syracuse

Syracuse University built on its long history of enrolling veterans to serve the new generation. After World War II, the university’s enrollment mushroomed from 5,000 to 17,000 students — an increase largely due to veterans using their new GI Bill benefits.

The university borrowed Quonset huts from the military to house veterans, gobbled up real estate, built portable classrooms, and geared up its support services for the influx of men who were the first in their families to enjoy a college education.

Likewise, Syracuse has spent much of the past decade devising programs to attract veterans. It participates in the Yellow Ribbon Program, a provision of the Post 9/11 GI Bill under which approved private colleges contribute (and the Department of Veterans Affairs matches) some or all of the tuition and fees that exceed the law’s thresholds.

To get people on campus thinking about the needs of student veterans, Syracuse officials started several programs. One of them — called “Orange Door” — educates administrators and faculty about military life. Those who have gone through several hours of training place an orange plaque on their office doors.

“It’s a sign that they have taken an interest in learning about the military experience,” says Haynie, who in addition to directing the veterans institute is the university’s vice chancellor for strategic initiatives and innovation. “It’s also a kind of ‘Welcome’ sign for the vets on our campus.”

Syracuse also created a campus affinity group of faculty and staff who are veterans and developed regular events, such as fairs and dinners, geared toward not just former service people, but also their families.

Those efforts paid off: The number of veterans in the student body has grown to 1,300 from about 200 in 2015, about five percent of the university’s total student population and almost double the national average.

“If you boil this down to an identity-level issue,” says Haynie, “it’s about having a supportive community.”

The university’s efforts go beyond creating a comfortable campus environment, though. Last summer, Syracuse piloted an associate degree program, enrolling 20 student veterans. A larger cohort will join this year. The liberal arts degree consists of 60 credits that form the core of the typical four-year Syracuse degree. The curriculum is offered online and at a discount and is available both to veterans and non-veteran adults.

“All of it was informed by our experience going the extra mile to reach veterans,” says Haynie. “To be successful in helping veteran and other adults, we need to decouple our academic offerings from time and place. We need to go where they are.”

“It’s been a priority for the university to be the number one college nationally for active-duty military and veterans,” adds Michael Frasciello, an Air Force veteran who serves as dean of University College, Syracuse’s school for part-time adult students. “We wanted the soldier in Afghanistan who wants the college experience to be able to get started.”

In the long run, the online associate degree is another way to fill seats that might otherwise go empty.

“It’s a pathway to a Syracuse degree,” Frasciello says. “When they’re ready, we want them to come and finish up here.”

Serving Adult Learners

As they search for ways to court more students who don’t fit the traditional 18- to 22-year-old profile, many colleges are taking lessons from programs geared to veterans. Here are three:

San Diego State University: The Joan and Art Barron Veterans Center opened in 2008 to serve the campus’s 4,750 veterans and active-duty students. It was deemed such a success that the university used it as a model for a commuter resource center it installed in its student union a few years later as it saw its number of older students grow.

The commuter center offers computer tables, free printing, a microwave and refrigerator, and study rooms. The idea is to give those who live away from campus a chance to relax or do their coursework while making connections with each other — all ingredients that may help more of them stay until they complete their degrees.

In the past five years, San Diego State has consistently bested the national graduation rate for full-time and part-time adults who have returned to school — a sign, university leaders say, that those students are comfortable there. In 2012, the two-year graduation rate for transfer students was 41 percent. That rose to 55 percent last year.

Robert Morris University: Its president, Chris Howard, who retired as an Air Force reserve lieutenant colonel, created a hub three years ago where adult, international, and transfer students can avail themselves of registration help, success coaches, transcript services, tutors, and links to counseling. The Pennsylvania university designed it to mirror a center at Robert Morris that serves student veterans.

“The whole lexicon of services are either there or can be accessed seamlessly from there,” says Howard. “As is the case with student veterans, it’s very important to meet people where they are … and learn what you can do to give them the best chance to learn.”

Colorado State University: Instead of creating one entity for veterans and another for other older adult students, it formed a combined center.

The Adult Learner and Veteran Services office, started in 2010 in response to the Post-9/11 GI Bill of Rights, serves both groups, with an eye toward their futures in the workplace. More than 7,000 of Colorado State’s 32,000 students are 25 or older or veterans.

Students can take part in academic preparedness, peer-to-peer advising, and tutoring programs, or just get a beverage and talk with other students.

To fund the 1,800-square-foot center, Colorado State had to make a case to its traditional-age students that it was worth an increase in student fees. “They saw the advantages of having more experienced people on campus,” says Barker.

Several metrics show that the center is making a difference. Grade point averages for both veterans and non-veteran adult groups are climbing, and usage of the center is also on the rise. In 2011, the Adult Learner and Veteran Service Center averaged 15 visitors per day. This year, that daily figure is 160 students.

The university plans to build out the center to 10,000 square feet by 2022 to accommodate a growing number of nontraditional students.