Guest Post: GI Bill Battle Only Half Won

By Jon Oberg

Congress deserves ample credit for approving a significant expansion in the GI Bill education benefits that veterans can use to pay for college. But as a veteran myself, I fear that the benefits are being oversold. Take a recent statement about the GI Bill made by a representative of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America: “It made going to school your full-time job. You worry about getting into school and you worry about getting as many degrees as you can but the government will worry about paying for it.”

Fellow veterans: don’t count on it. Although billions more will be spent annually in your name, you may not get as much help as you think. A lot of the money will disappear before you see it.

I used data from the most recent student aid databases (the 2004 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study) to see how veterans fared at four-year public and private colleges, as compared to other undergraduates. The results confirmed my suspicions that despite the government’s help, most veterans have been stuck with large amounts of student loan debt and received little in the way of institutional financial aid (the country’s largest source of grants) from the colleges themselves.

In short, many colleges have treated veterans as an afterthought. Some institutions have clearly used veterans’ GI benefits to replace institutional aid dollar-for-dollar, and shifted the money they saved into merit aid for the kind of high-achieving students that improve their rankings. In such situations there has been no remedy for veterans, as the federal government has largely looked the other way. Many veterans have gotten the message and lowered their educational ambitions.

For the upcoming academic year, Congress has given current veterans’ benefits a healthy boost, as a transition to implementing the new GI Bill. But this will not necessarily translate into less debt. I am not aware of any studies that show student debt going down at four-year colleges when spending on federal grants goes up. Other numbers – institutional prices, grants, discounts — will change, but debt will remain high. That is the way the current “enrollment management” system, in fashion throughout much of higher education, works.

In 2009 and beyond, when the new GI Bill is completely in effect, full-time student veterans will have their tuition fully covered (within certain limits) and will receive a stipend for books and housing, the combination of which should minimize debt. But these generous benefits will be available only to those veterans who have earned full coverage and attend full time. Veterans who have less than 36 months of military service will see their tuition benefits proportionately reduced. Those who attend college only part-time will not receive housing benefits. As a result, a great number of veterans will again find themselves at the mercy of a financial aid system that is decidedly unfriendly to them.

Veterans and non-veterans alike look back fondly at the original World-War II GI Bill that increased higher education access for a whole generation of veterans, many at our nation’s top public and private colleges. The influx of veterans also changed many institutions for the better. But that was before the establishment of the current financial aid system. The time has come to acknowledge that the system is not working, considering that Congress, since the Nixon administration, has tried to increase access for low-income students only to see the access gap continue to be as wide as ever.

To be sure, not all veterans will have trouble finding quality colleges friendly to them. States may increasingly step up for veterans. Some private colleges may also reset their priorities to take part in the “Yellow Ribbon Program.” Under that excellent provision in the new GI Bill, the Department of Veterans Affairs will match colleges’ institutional aid awards dollar-for-dollar, creating a much-needed partnership between the federal government and colleges on behalf of veterans. But for every institution that bravely tries to break away from the loan-obsessed, merit-dominated hegemony of the current system, others have decided that they cannot, and will not, unilaterally disarm. I fear that many institutions will be looking at veterans as an easy mark, carrying a lot of federal cash to convert to their own priorities.

Congress could fix matters by making sure that the federal government and colleges start working together for the benefit of targeted populations, be they veterans or low-income students or both. It would not be the first time Congress has had to step in: lawmakers held hearings and changed the original GI Bill in 1952 to prevent benefit manipulation. I doubt this Congress will act, however, unless veterans fight an even tougher battle than the one that got the new GI Bill passed. In higher education, Congress and the executive branch find it easier to spend than to make programs work, and this new effort may only be the latest in a long list of casualties.

Jon Oberg served as a Navy officer in USS Rainier, USS Arlington, and at the Defense Communication Agency-Europe. He is a former higher education executive and state and U.S. Department of Education official. His views are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of the New America Foundation.