Congress has bestowed education benefits on military veterans since the passage of the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, the law better known as the GI Bill of Rights. The Post-9/11 GI Bill, which took effect in 2009, aims to give today’s veterans the same kind of aid.
To date, more than 550,000 veterans of the post-9/11 era have received benefits under that program, using them at more than 6,500 public, private, and proprietary colleges across the country.
Formally known as the Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act of 2008, the law is designed to let veterans go to college full time and transition smoothly into the civilian work force. It pays tuition directly to institutions for up to 36 months, depending on the length of a veteran’s active-duty service. At the same time, it provides a monthly housing allowance and a stipend for books and supplies.
Veterans are eligible to receive the benefits if they have served at least 90 days on active duty after September 10, 2001, or have been otherwise honorably or medically discharged from the armed forces. They have 15 years to use their allotment, and—in a major departure from previous programs—veterans who meet certain criteria can transfer the education benefits to their dependents.
The Post-9/11 GI Bill is one of several education programs the Department of Veterans Affairs offers. The programs, which serve both as recruitment tools for the all-volunteer military and work-force-training mechanisms, also include the Montgomery GI Bill, a 1984 law that was the primary education benefit for veterans until the Post-9/11 GI Bill. (Despite much enthusiasm for the Post-9/11 GI Bill, some veterans prefer to use the Montgomery GI Bill, for financial, geographic, or educational reasons.)
Devising a strategy to pay for college is a headache for most students, and veterans are no exception. Tuition payments under the new law will cover the cost of the most-expensive public college in a veteran’s home state. For veterans attending institutions elsewhere or private colleges, a cap of $17,500 applies.
For veterans who opt for private colleges, the Yellow Ribbon Program can ease the burden of additional costs. Under this program, voluntary for colleges, the federal government will match any institutional aid above the $17,500 cap.
The Post-9/11 GI Bill has generated a lot of hype, but many veterans who use it have hit some bumps along the way. For the first year or so of its existence, the Department of Veterans Affairs faced a steep backlog: More than 250,000 veterans applied for benefits, only to see their claims languish for months. More recently, many student veterans learned that revisions in the law stripped them of a housing stipend during semester breaks, and so they scrambled to make accommodations.
Nearly three years in, results of the program are just beginning to emerge. Some of the first veterans to enroll may have completed associate degrees by now, and if they went on to four-year colleges, they could be on track to finish bachelor’s degrees by next spring.
