Students everywhere are moving into college and starting classes. This week — and possibly beyond — we’re going to look at military and post-military education in a variety of contexts. How do we measure what schools are “best” for veterans? What’s the best place to get a military education — a service academy, or an ROTC? What do veterans liaisons do at schools, from the perspective of one of the country’s very best liaisons? And much more.

As always, thanks for reading, and don’t hesitate to reach out with thoughts and feedback.

THE BIG STORY

What’s The Best College For Veterans?

Nobody really seems to know.

In 2022, I was president of the Yale Veterans Association (YVA) and had been for about five years. Co-founded in 2012 by a couple of what we colloquially refer to as “Old Yalies” — people who graduated from the college before the Yale integrated women into the undergraduate classes — YVA had long advocated on behalf of veterans, scoring some impressive successes. The Yellow Ribbon Program went from 50 slots across the university, capped at $5,000 per slot, to many graduate and professional schools going unlimited / unlimited (Yale Law School, Yale School of Management, Yale School of Medicine). A former enlisted Ranger had donated funds to reserve a beautiful and dignified location, Battell Chapel, to host Yale’s ROTC Commissioning Ceremony, an annual event that became a proud and necessary component of graduation weekend. YVA funded, organized, and coordinated a monthly beer call open to all veteran students, faculty, alumni, and staff, and a welcome to school bbq open to the same.

Why mention all this? What does it have to do with anything? 2022 — last year — Yale was recognized as the top college for veterans by US News and World Report.

As someone who closely tracked Yale’s position vis a vis other colleges and universities, this came as a bit of a surprise. After all, objectively, while it has become a better place for veterans than it was 10 years ago, Yale isn’t the best college for veterans among the Ivys (that’s almost certainly Columbia) or in Connecticut (that’s either UConn — Storrs or Quinnipiac), let alone the best in the country. Yale is one of the best colleges in the world and a student who’s accepted there ought to attend. But if we’re speaking frankly and in terms of how it views and treats veterans, I’m not even sure it’s in the top 10% nationally.

This wasn’t the first time I’d seen prestige accorded to a person who didn’t deserve it. A company commander I knew received a Bronze Star Medal although he couldn’t pass the run portion of the PT test. A first sergeant received a Bronze Star Medal for Valor for sticking his M4 out of a window and firing blindly during an ambush when his turret gunner was shot in the head and killed. Sometimes the wrong person gets the wrong award. In the military, we understand this, and take it in stride. We assume that what we’re really being awarded for is all the things we did that nobody was around to see. The award is holistic.

So I posted what I think was one of my finest LinkedIn posts, a masterpiece of equivocation and rationalization. I said, as politely as possible, that Yale had been granted a distinction that recognized the length we’d traveled from 2012. I also noted that it was a call to future action: a Beowulf Boast. Even so, some people who worked on behalf of veterans for other colleges were (justifiably) upset, and confused at how Yale could claim the top spot, or have claim to it.

Why was Yale named number 1? Without knowing everything about US News and World Report’s ranking system, let’s look at the top 10 and see if we can develop a hypothesis

1. Yale University

2. University of Chicago

3. Dartmouth College

4. Princeton University

5. Cornell University

6. Stanford University

7. University of California — Berkeley; University of California — Ann Arbor

8. /

9. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; University of Southern California; University of Virginia

10. /

This looks a lot like a list of some of the top colleges in the countries for anyone, veterans or non-veterans. If the logic is “as a veteran if you can go to Yale or Stanford you will get a better job than otherwise,” that’s probably true. I’m not sure this is how people are reading the rankings. College is housing. Where do you live, especially if you have a family? College is the meal plan. College — for a veteran — is the VA (how close, how accessible). College is tuition and the financial aid office.

The Military Times runs its own annual poll of the best colleges for veterans in the US. It is very different from that of US News and World Report — it depends on a radically different methodology. In the sense that it’s something one would only know about if there were administrators who read Military Times and were plugged into the idea of making a college friendly to veterans (or veterans themselves), it’s probably a truer overall gauge of whether a college is a good place to go, as a veteran. Here are its top 10.

1. University of South Carolina

2. Bowling Green State University

3. Quinnipiac University

4. University of Texas at Arlington

5. University of Maryland Global Campus

6. University of the Incarnate Word

7. Angelo State University

8. University of Arizona

9. Eastern Michigan University

10. California State University, San Bernardino

That’s not a different list, that’s a different planet. Like ripping open a pack of Topps baseball cards and finding Magic the Gathering cards. Yale isn’t even a part of it — it may be that nobody there knows about the ranking in the first place. Why should they? Yale is Yale, people put it on lists, not vice versa.

This is not intended as a criticism of Yale, or any of the top 10 colleges for veterans on the US News and World report list; it’s a reminder that almost nobody is paying attention to what veterans want or need for their education. As someone who graduated from Yale before I joined the military (through Army Officer Candidate School, Alpha Company “Alphatraz,” 2005), and who knows what it’s like to be a student veteran after attending Columbia University for a M.S. in journalism, and SUNY Stony Brook for an M.F.A. in creative writing, I can say that different colleges treat veterans differently. It’s important, how a college treats veterans, because one’s college experience coincides with a moment when one is usually processing a lot of very complicated psychological and social issues — transitioning from one’s identity as a service member back into the civilian world, as best as one can. And the difference between arguing with an administrator about getting access to food because Congress delayed your BAH payment, and having someone call you up to explain what’s happening and tell you the school’s plan to help you — is the difference between a college that is a good place for veterans to go, and one that is… just a college.

Veterans may not know it, but with the recent Supreme Court ruling on how colleges can create diverse student bodies — no longer through affirmative action — they have suddenly become one of the most prized and treasured potential students on the market. It’s never been a better time to be a student veteran, from this perspective. But every college isn’t the best for veterans. And even the best colleges have room for improvement.

TOP READS IN MONEY & FINANCE

Wages up 4.3% since last year at this time, and the economy added 187,000 jobs. Unemployment at 3.8%, up from 3.5% in July.

Buying a house? One risky but potentially profitable technique, “appraisal waivers,” can come with a costly downside for the unprepared.

Health and dental insurance can be high in the U.S., which has led to discount providers across the border to the south and north.

TOP READS IN THE MILITARY

A rash of incidents have led to intelligence uncovering a large Chinese plot to spy on U.S. military bases.

The Brandon Act is being rolled out, offering hopes that the military can improve a culture that treats mental difficulties with contempt and hostility.

An inspiring look at one of the success stories of the Army’s new Future Soldier Preparatory Course.

TOP READS FOR VETERANS

In a “last of its kind” ceremony, a former member of OSS who jumped into France to fight Nazis and China to fight the Japanese was given a Green Beret and formally inducted into the organization. He is 100.

20,000 wounded veterans of the war in Ukraine require prosthetics and rehabilitation, straining the country’s limited resources.

TOP READS AROUND THE WORLD

This one weird trick will disproportionately affect your kid’s chances of getting into a great school (play some rich sport at a prep school).

Invasive species (plants, and animals) responsible for nearly half a trillion dollars in damage per year. Humanity has barely begun taking care of the problem.

The United Kingdom is leaking water. Bad infrastructure and climate change seem to be the chief culprits.

Will workers need to become fluent or at least conversant in AI, in order to make more efficient use of the technology?

People’s attention span has deteriorated to the point where even YouTube is too long!

Interesting longer read about a business opportunity: standing up systems for recycling electric batteries (specifically, car batteries).

Temp worker usage among firms is down, often a harbinger of economic recession.

HUMOR

Three kinds of people in the world: those who almost joined the service, those who did but are incompetent for any other work, and everyone else.