GI Bill Consumer Awareness Act of 2012
As many of you may know, in addition to being Heather's Communications Director, I am also a retired U.S. Marine Corps officer, having served my country honorably for nearly 23 years. Prior to earning my commission, I served for nearly 11 years as an enlisted man and used my GI Bill benefits to earn a Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) degree in Management Information Systems (MIS) from the University of Oklahoma - Go Sooners! The military offered me a great opportunity to escape the unforgiving shackles of poverty that often limit the educational opportunities for generations of people. Using my GI Bill benefits I was able to graduate Summa Cum Laude (3.95 GPA) from an excellent state school and subsequently go on to earn a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree from Webster University before my military retirement - the first graduate degree in my family.
I used the Montgomery GI Bill, a benefit replaced by a far more generous veterans' education program - the Post 9/11 GI Bill. Among the many improvements over its older Montgomery predecessor is the addition of a housing allowance to enable the veteran to concentrate on his/her education without having to hold down one or more jobs just to afford a place to live while in school. Additionally, not everyone is destined to pursue a four-year college degree and for those veterans who elect to bypass college, they can pass along their Post 9/11 GI Bill benefit to a spouse or divy it up amongst their children. While the value of the benefit (enough to cover one veteran attending a four-year college or university) does not change, one can easily see how the ability to defray college expenses for one's spouse or some of each child's college education can significantly reduce a family's overall debt burden and give that family a better future due to the veteran's service. Long story short, this is an excellent program for veterans who sacrifice so much for our country.
That said, it is also a program ripe for exploitation, as many for-profit colleges and universities have already discovered. As noted in the recently released Senator Harkin Report on For-Profit Colleges, "Servicemembers, veterans, spouses, and family members have become highly attractive prospects to for-profit colleges, and many schools have put significant resources into recruiting and enrolling students eligible for these benefits. Lead generation Web sites, specifically designed to attract members of the military and veterans, use layouts and logos similar to official military websites, but do not inform users that the purpose of the site is to collect contact information on behalf of the site’s for-profit college clients. Internal documents show that some schools’ pursuit of military benefits led them to recruit from the most vulnerable military populations, sometimes recruiting at wounded warrior centers and veterans hospitals. In addition to aggressively seeking military personnel, the investigation showed that some recruiters misled or lied to service members as to whether their tuition would be fully covered by military benefits."
Which brings us to Senate Bill 2241, introduced by Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) on Mar. 27, 2012. The bill recognizes that U.S. service members and veterans are in the crosshairs of for-proft colleges and universities' recruitment and aggressive marketing tactics, thus need to be given accurate information from the Veterans Administration and the military services themselves on the true costs of their education and its performance relative to more traditional colleges and universities. Specifically, the bill "Directs the Secretary of Veterans Affairs (Secretary), on an ongoing basis, to make available to veterans, members of the Armed Forces (members), and spouses and dependents eligible to receive, or who are receiving, educational assistance throught the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) or the Department of Defense (DoD) specified information about educational institutions and the programs of education available to such veterans and members... [as well as] specified information about the types of accreditation available to educational institutions and programs of education, a general overview of federal student aid programs and the implications of incurring student loan debt, and educational program results."
Bottom line - this is certainly a step in the right direction as veterans and their families who elect to use their hard-earned GI Bill benefits need to know what they are getting for their investment. To learn more about S. 2241: GI Bill Consumer Awareness Act of 2012, read it here.