I’m in a bit of a celebratory mood. You see, I finished graduate school this week. Like nearly half a million other OEF and OIF veterans (431,000 more or less), I was using VA benefits to attend university. For all my whining and complaining about the VA—particularly the Veterans Benefits Administration—getting my education benefits was pretty painless. Really.
This is due, in part, I think to the fact that each university has a benefits coordinator who does most of the work getting the paperwork straight and who knows the ins and outs of the system. But the VA office in Buffalo, NY that handled my case was easy to work with and prompt in dispatching the payments. In fact, the one time that my semester tuition payments weren’t on time was my fault.
Some universities step up and make it even easier for their veteran students to get through. Some take part in the Yellow Ribbon Program in which the college makes up the difference between what the VA will pay for tuition and the university’s costs. This makes attending college more or less free for the veteran/students.
Of course, there are a few wrinkles, too. The VA will pay a stipend to full-time students to cover housing costs. The amount is keyed to the DoD’s Variable Housing Allowance tables and is set at the amount an Army or Marine sergeant would receive. This frees the veteran/student to attend school without having to work to pay rent. But there doesn’t appear to be a standard across the universities on what exactly “full-time” means. At some schools it is nine credit hours at some schools it is 12 credit hours. All of this varies between undergraduate and graduate schools, too. But I’m quibbling and these aren’t VA problems, they are individual university problems.
For the record, the VA has paid over $15 billion to 654,561 separate beneficiaries to attend schools under the Post 9/11 GI Bill. The program worked for me. And while I’m reasonably sure there are veterans who have struggled to get their benefits, I am just as sure that this benefit program works considerably better than some others do—I’m looking at you C&P.
So now that I’m a graduate, I’ll enter the job market where things are not so rosy. So far I have already lined up one part-time gig. I start in January. Fingers crossed for more.
