In talking about veteran education, we need to take a moment to discuss benefits; there is often a hazy conception of what a benefit is, and to what, exactly, a veteran is entitled. This can lead to disappointment or worse when a veteran matriculates at a university.

So we’re going to take a little time to look at education benefits; what they are, and how to use them effectively. Today, we begin with the Post-9/11 GI Bill, the Subaru Outback of veterans education benefits.

Thank you for reading, as always, and don’t hesitate to reach out with thoughts, suggestions, and comments.

*Postscript / edit — after I published this, a friend and veteran reached out to me to note the following: (1) after a veteran with the Montgomery GI Bill - Active Duty (aka Chapter 30) has gone through their benefits, they can request a full year of Post-9/11 GI Bill coverage, which could affect folks who used the Montgomery GI Bill and (2) service members with a Purple Heart have an unlimited amount of time to use their GI Bill benefits, rather than the 15 year cap that applies to most veterans who earned the benefit. Important context, and a reminder that there are a lot of ins and outs to these benefits. If you’re interested in pursuing higher education, and you have or had the GI Bill, read the fine print! [added at 10:56 EST, ~2 hours after the initial mailing]

THE BIG STORY

Know Your Education Benefits: The GI Bill

Whether one is attending college for the first time or going for a master's degree, understanding education benefits is a simple and powerful way to get ahead.

Veterans who leave service have three primary education benefits on which to draw. These benefits, which came into being at different times, have varying degrees of restrictions — some require that they were part of one’s contract when joining the service, others require evidence of valor or disability. Others still require nothing beyond service for a certain period of time, honorable or otherwise.

These benefits represent a tremendous financial advantage, given the astronomical cost of higher education. Used correctly they can go a long way to offsetting the ostensible hit one takes to income while in the service.

The educational benefits to which veterans may be entitled are the GI Bill, Vocational Rehabilitation, and in-state educational benefits that vary from state to state, as well as based on the percentage to which one is entitled based on service (one might have 20% Vocational Rehabilitation, or 60% GI Bill). Today, we examine the GI Bill.

There are two types of GI Bill: the Post-9/11 GI Bill or Chapter 33, and the Montgomery GI Bill - Active Duty or Chapter 30. A veteran or beneficiary can only use one of these two, though they can, after serving for a period of time, give the benefit to a spouse or family member. The Montgomery GI Bill capped out at $30,000 total, and is for the most part no longer used, supplanted by the Post-9/11 GI Bill. The Post-9/11 GI Bill, which caps out at the highest tuition charged at a state institution in the state in which one hopes to attend college, is far more generous.

Assuming one had 100% of one’s educational benefit with the Post-9/11 GI Bill, and wished to attend school in North Carolina in 2021-22, one could have gotten $9100 of tuition covered; the annual cost of tuition at the UNC system for that year. The Post-9/11 GI Bill would have also covered fees, room, and board, and $1000 for books. As the total cost to attend UNC-Chapel Hill was over $20,000, that is the amount which would have been covered. The Post-9/11 GI Bill also offers students a Basic Housing Allowance at the rate an E-5, married, with dependents would earn in the area they were studying while enrolled full time (as BAH varies from state to state and region to region).

Here, one encounters the first and most obvious drawback of the GI Bill. What if one wanted to attend Duke, and not UNC? Well, Duke is in North Carolina. And the GI Bill will take care of up to $9100 in tuition, as well as covering room and board (~$11k at UNC). Duke’s tuition was about $60k in 2021-22, and room and board an additional $19k, for a total of $79k for a year. The Post-9/11 GI Bill will only cover $20k of that $79k per year ($9100 plus the $11k room and board), leaving the veteran with nearly $60k to pay out of pocket. The student’s looking at a debt of $240k by the time they graduate, assuming the veteran isn’t Tommy Boy.

This shortfall gets met by those colleges and universities participating in the Yellow Ribbon Program. Colleges and universities participate at different levels, or not at all, and Yellow Ribbon Program benefits may only apply to those who have the Post-9/11 GI Bill at 100% funding. It’s important to understand ahead of time what that participation looks like — ideally, before one has made a commitment to attend.

When I began volunteering with the Yale Veterans Association in 2012, for example, Yale (my alma mater) offered 50 “Yellow Ribbon Program” scholarships across the entire university, each of which was capped at $5,000. This meant the first 50 veterans in a particular year who were accepted to study at Yale — its law school, its undergraduate program, any of its graduate schools, its medical school — received on top of their Post-9/11 GI Bill benefit an additional $5,000 toward tuition. And the difference between the tuition at the University of Connecticut and Yale was, at that time, similar to the difference in tuition at UNC and Duke.

Yale’s come a long way since then, with the School of Management, Law School, and Medical School (among others) offering unlimited Yellow Ribbon slots, with unlimited matching capacity; this is known as “unlimited/unlimited” and is the gold standard for the Yellow Ribbon Program, as it fulfills the intent of the GI Bill that qualified veterans pay nothing for their higher education. Veteran students accepted to Yale Law School on the Post-9/11 GI Bill pay nothing, and receive their full BAH.

But while Yale’s undergraduate college offers unlimited slots, it caps the amount of assistance at the cost of tuition, room, and board minus the BAH that one receives from the Post-9/11 GI Bill while living in New Haven and enrolled full-time. For reasons that are still obscure, Yale’s administration’s position is that BAH is an entitlement, rather than part of the GI Bill, so students must acquire scholarships or take out student loans to make up the difference.

Yale cannot, therefore, be said to offer true “unlimited/unlimited” Yellow Ribbon Program matching funds to undergraduate student veterans, and not every veteran matriculating at Yale may understand this beforehand. Most would probably say that if one gets an opportunity to attend Yale, the $80k or so in assistance they’re missing is probably worth incurring as debt in the long run, and that’s almost certainly true (the WSJ certainly thinks so). Still, for those who prefer the bird in the hand over the two in the bush, this is a consideration.

As a proud Son of Eli, I must point out here that while Yale does not do as well as they could, they still do far better than Harvard, which caps its Yellow Ribbon Program assistance to undergraduates at $6,000. For shame, Harvard. For shame!

Most people who enlist have the full Post-9/11 GI Bill / Chapter 33 benefit if they meet the following criteria: 36 months of aggregate service on active duty or 30 days on active duty plus an honorable discharge for a service-connected disability.

It gets more complicated for officers who commission through ROTC or a service academy, who must first discharge their service obligation. Essentially, the military sees this as their having already received an education benefit. Once such officers complete their service obligation of three or four years, they begin earning Post-9/11 benefits.

If, like me, you’re an officer who commissioned through OCS, the clock starts ticking on Post-9/11 GI Bill benefits the minute you step into uniform. “All” you have to do is pay full freight for college up front.

The Post-9/11 GI Bill is a really terrific benefit that can be a true game-changer when it comes to higher education. You’ll want to track the difference between tuition covered by the Post-9/11 GI Bill and that covered by particular college’s Yellow Ribbon Program, and what the BAH is for an area. And you’ll want to know what percent of the benefit you have or have left beforehand. Once you figure that out, it’s pretty straightforward. And most colleges (as we discussed last week with Villanova’s Mike Brown) have administrators dedicated full time to making sure the process is as smooth and painless as possible.

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