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Military Benefits/GI Bill/ROTC/Veterans
As the October 5 deadline for Rhodes Scholarships approached, some of the nation's best and brightest undergraduates knew not to bother with the application—they were ineligible for this golden ticket. Their fatal flaw? They chose to serve our country as members of the armed forces.
Starting this month, military veterans pursuing an education under the G.I. Bill have many more choices. The money for tuition, books and housing used to be just for study at colleges and universities, but now the G.I. Bill also covers non-degree institutions. That is good news. But there is also peril in these new opportunities. Unless strong controls are put in place, the surge of G.I. Bill money will be a windfall for fly-by-night schools more interested in cashing in on veterans than educating them.
In between patrols, the guys in my platoon talked about going to school one day, as if it were something just barely out of reach. Many of us were ready to leave the military to start new lives. But when I enrolled in college after coming home from Iraq, I quickly learned that the buddy-centric Army culture ingrained in me did not fit well with student life.
For-profit colleges have been under fire for graduates' high loan default rates. Now the industry is accused of targeting members of the military with aggressive and often misleading marketing. David Greene talks with Holly Petraeus, director of service member affairs at the Consumer Financial Protection Agency and the wife of General David Petraeus, who recently wrote about the issue in The New York Times.
Democrats in the U.S. Senate are turning up the heat on for-profit colleges for their heavy recruiting of veterans and active-duty service members. But it remains unclear if the strong words on Capitol Hill will translate into policy changes that could slow the flow of military financial assistance to the colleges.
Eight for-profit colleges collected a combined $1.02-billion in veterans' education benefits last year, about 23 percent of all of those benefits disbursed, according to a Senate report released on Thursday.
A growing proportion of military veterans tapping into benefits from the new GI Bill are using them at for-profit colleges, according to a report from Senate critics of the industry.
Democrats continued to build their case for changing a federal regulation known as the 90/10 rule by arguing at a U.S. Senate oversight hearing on Thursday that the current formula encourages for-profit colleges to aggressively recruit military veterans and service members without regard to their educational outcomes.
The new Post 9/11 G.I. bill, which substantially boosted education benefits for veterans, has been a windfall for large chains of for-profit colleges, according to figures released Thursday by Senate Democrats arguing for tighter regulation of the sector.
The nation's for-profit colleges and universities have reaped a windfall from the Post-Sept. 11 GI Bill. The top for-profit companies brought in around $1 billion in benefits in the last year alone. And some lawmakers say federal regulations encourage these schools to target current and former members of the military.
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