Back to School
Written by Ted McKenna
Just how many servicemembers take advantage of the Post- 9/11 GI Bill remains to be seen, but colleges and universities around the country long ago began preparing for what might be a wave of veterans arriving on their campuses. But will the expected wave be more like a trickle, at least to start?
Some schools estimate an increase of roughly 10 percent in veterans arriving at their schools. That’s great news for schools in the online arena, for example, which compete fiercely with one another for veteran enrollment, and at private and sometimes even public colleges and universities that are eager to enroll full-time students with a guaranteed source of funding.
But given the evolving nature of the benefits connected with the new bill, many school administrators are cautious about predicting just how many new students they’ll see, at least initially. James Biernesser, director of military programs at Bellevue University, Bellevue, Neb., said it’s just too hard to predict right now how much additional enrollment his school will see.
“Best guess: 5 percent? But I just don’t know,” he said. “I suspect that, up front, a lot of folks thought there would be a deluge of folks; I don’t think it’s going to be the case. The VA is working very hard, but soldiers, sailors and airmen are going to step cautiously into this. ‘Do I want to enroll?’ Because once you enroll, you’re committed to the program. I see a lot of questions up front about this—a lot of questions the VA is trying to field.”
Jim Hendrickson, VP of military education for Colorado Technical University, which has about 9,500 current military and veteran students across its five ground campuses as well as online, said his best-guess estimate of the increase in enrollment at schools as a result of the new benefits is about 10 percent.
“People will be doing a compare and contrast with the Montgomery Bill,” Hendrickson said. “The rules have come out in broad strokes, but the details are [still] coming out in bits and pieces.”
Because of the still-evolving nature of the new benefits, including the numbers of institutions participating in the Yellow Ribbon program and whether enrollees in online programs will be able to receive housing stipends, Tom Finaly, vice president of administration for Cypress, Calif.-based TUI University, said that he and others in the education field are mainly holding off on speculating just how many people will take advantage of the new benefits.
“Nobody is really sure how it’s going to turn out,” he said. “But it does seem like it will be successful, especially because it will be so affordable.”
TREADING LIGHTLY
Certainly, interest is high among prospective students. But Bellevue’s Biernesser noted that while Bellevue’s admissions staff is certainly getting lots more questions about the VA education benefits, it is also being very cautious about what it tells students. The broad strokes of the new benefits may be known, but some details of it are still not completely set. For example, online students could also be eligible for housing allowances depending on the status of a related bill in Congress.
TUI’s Finaly said that his school and all other online education providers are very eager indeed to find out whether attendees of online schools will be able to get housing stipends. Also of interest is the extent to which private schools decide to participate in the Yellow Ribbon program, which will be a big factor for prospective students in deciding whether to go to a particular private or public school—whether the school be online or made of brick and mortar (see related story on page 15).
“It’s too early to determine the effect of the new bill,” Finaly said. “We don’t see it yet—any increase in applications.” Nevertheless, schools said they view the bill as an opportunity to increase admissions and as a result are boosting outreach to veterans.
Shawn O’Riley, executive director of Adelphi University’s adult continuing education department, University College, said that he didn’t expect the new VA education benefits to have a massive impact on his school in particular, given that of the 8,000 or so students at Adelphi, only 20 to 30 are veterans at any given time. But the school is reaching out to local military bases and recruiters in the hope that Adelphi, which is based in Garden City, N.Y., becomes a bit better known as a possible option for servicemembers and veterans.
“We at least want to get our name mentioned,” O’Riley said. “In the past, they might not have considered a school like Adelphi; it’s just not on anyone’s radar, including recruiters and VA staff.”
O’Riley said that a depressed economy certainly has a significant effect on schools, for both good and bad: prospective students without good jobs more carefully consider schools as a way to boost their skills; at the same time, many people have less money to spend on education.
LOCAL OUTREACH
But inquiries from current servicemembers and veterans about the new benefits are up at many schools, which say they are making special efforts to answer questions as well as they can while still directing prospective or current students to VA sources of information.
Ways that Bellevue, for instance, has sought to educate members of its community and the local military community in general, given the school is only a mile from Offutt AFB, include a public meeting the school hosted in May with Nebraska VA officials to answer questions about the new benefits. Other colleges and universities around the country, meanwhile, say they are providing additional training and adding staff to their admissions offices to field inquiries by prospective and current students about new VA educational benefits.
Michael Johnson, director of the military and veterans office at George Mason University, Fairfax, Va., said that the complexity of the new GI Bill is very daunting and confusing to some veterans, and while the VA and its representatives are the best official source for information about VA benefits, Johnson and his colleagues are trying their best to support VA outreach.
“It’s a lot to navigate,” Johnson said. “Some students are quite capable of figuring it out on their own. But for others, it’s a matter of going through it all and saying: ‘Did you think about this? Did you think about that?’ In the military, you have a platoon sergeant, a company commander—people telling you where to be and what to do. But once you leave the military, no one tells you what to do anymore.”
Along with increasing staff or training at admissions offices and reaching out more to the military community, colleges and universities around the country expecting an increase in veterans on campus or logging on online are also planning to expand services and facilities required by veterans, such as counseling services. O’Riley noted that veterans sometimes have special needs that schools may need to increase or create services or facilities to meet properly.
“One of the things we’re doing—and I think a lot of schools are doing—is figuring out how veterans fit in with our current offerings,” O’Riley said. “We have a lot of student services, but we’ve never put it together in a coordinated way. We have some staff and faculty that are veterans, and they’ve been talking to us about their experiences so that we have the ability to provide the right services to our new students.”
Certainly, for those veterans of combat coping with post-traumatic stress disorder, college and university counseling centers may need to add staff, O’Riley noted. Additional training or staff may be required at admissions offices to handle the influx of inquiries from current and prospective students about the new GI Bill; the VA rules related to the new bill; the benefits of new bill compared with its predecessor, the Montgomery GI Bill; and more.
MONITORING THE LAUNCH
Submission online for benefits began May 1, and many veteran groups say they will be watching closely how the submission process goes and reaching out to the VA and Capitol Hill should problems arise. For example, a number of media outlets reported slow processing times by the VA’s Website during the first few days that veterans could begin applying online for the new benefits.
Keith Wilson, director of the Veterans Benefits Administration’s education service, said that, overall, the initial application process went well, with more than 3,000 applications for education benefits received on the first day.
“VA did receive 28 comments of system slowness,” Wilson said. “By Saturday morning, the system had been enhanced with that issue being resolved.”
Brian McGough, legislative chief for VoteVets.org, a veterans advocacy group that lobbied hard for the Post-9/11 GI Bill, said that the VA has done well so far in passing along information as expeditiously as possible to veterans about the new rules for the education benefits, but that any number of problems might occur with such a large, bureaucratic project as this.
“There could be problems with anything,” McGough said. “People not being declared eligible even though they are. Lost files on computers. I think there will be a big push of veterans trying to get in, but I’m sure the VA will do a wonderful job of oversight.” ♦
Useful Links
The Post-9/11 GI Bill is not expected to have as much impact on society as the original GI Bill, according to most experts, if only because the military today is so much smaller than it was in World War II. By July 1958, about 7.8 million veterans had used the GI Bill to go to school or get some sort of vocational training.
Still, early media reports indicate considerable traffic on the VA Website, at www.gibill.va.gov, which began accepting applications for benefits May 1. That site also serves as the best source for official information on rules relating to the Post-9/11 GI Bill and understanding its benefits compared with the Montgomery GI Bill, which, like the new bill, provides up to 36 months of benefits.
For an unofficial listing of which private colleges and universities in the country are participating in the Yellow Ribbon program—in which the VA matches whatever subsidy offered by a private school to make up the difference with lower-priced in-state public schools—see the Website of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, at www.naicu.edu.