A friend of mine graduated from law school several years ago. It was a state school — fairly well regarded, the same program from which my father graduated after leaving his career as a classical guitarist — and, I happened to know, it had a part-time program that met evenings, intended for people with full time jobs.

He paid nothing in tuition, because he is a veteran (a former Army Ranger). And in Connecticut, veterans pay nothing in tuition when they attend state schools such as the University of Connecticut.

Veterans don’t always think through all of their options when it comes to the benefits offered by their state. Depending on where you live, these can be (when one considers the cost of higher education) among the most robust benefits available. Today I wanted to run through the best of the state-by-state benefits.

THE BIG STORY

Know Your Education Benefits: The Best States for Veterans

Some states offer veterans educational benefits on top of those offered through the VA

National media and the national conversations that it covers spends by far the most time discussing and considering federal education benefits for veterans. Those federal benefits, run through and by the Department of Veterans Affairs, potentially apply to every American veteran. Therefore, covering that topic is of interest to every U.S. veteran (whether that veteran qualifies or not is a different matter).

But there’s another route to education as a veteran. And depending on which state you live in, that route could be surprisingly easy and straightforward. As it turns out, many states offer qualified veterans some educational assistance through their state-run colleges, universities, and technical schools.

The following is a list — not comprehensive — of those states that offer qualified veterans something, ranging from a lot to a little (but more than nothing). The list does not include states that offer education benefits to the children, dependents, orphans, widows, or spouses of qualified veterans; many more states do step forward in that department. This considers only the benefit to the veteran, from the veteran’s perspective. It almost always — to be very clear about this — only applies to publicly-funded colleges and universities.

First, there is the short but extraordinary list of states that give full tuition waivers to qualified veterans where the definition of “qualified” is extremely wide and includes most veterans. Those states are

Connecticut

and

Texas

If you live in Connecticut or Texas, and are a qualified veteran (pretty lenient definitions in CT and TX, worth checking out), and decide to get an undergraduate or graduate degree at one of the state institutions, the state will waive tuition and fees. If it sounds too good to be true, well, I don’t know what to tell you. Connecticut and Texas are the best states to be a veteran, from an education standpoint.

Next, there is the much longer list of states that offer full or partial tuition waivers for qualified veterans where the definition of “qualified” is narrow and/or exclusive. I’ve listed them here with a gloss of the requirement or limitation. Not trying to reproduce the Encyclopedia Britannica in this post:

Massachusetts (undergraduate only)

Rhode Island (service connected disabilities only)

New York (conflict-specific, and only for full-time student enrollment)

West Virginia (A program for veterans in need due to unemployment and having exhausted previous benefits, and a program for Medal of Honor winners and Purple Heart recipients)

Alabama (Purple Heart recipients only)

Florida (Purple Heart recipients only, for undergraduate degrees)

Illinois (if you were an Illinois resident six months before entering the service, and served at least one year on Active Duty or any amount of time in a country during active hostilities, and were honorably discharged — tuition and certain fees waived)

Missouri (limits the cost tuition to $50 per credit hour while enrolled in public colleges or universities after calculating and applying financial aid, undergraduate only; if you’re a combat veteran of the post-9/11 conflicts and received an honorable discharge)

New Mexico (Vietnam war veterans and combat veterans having served since 1990 who exhausted their GI Bill can get tuition and fees waived)

Utah (Purple Heart recipients may have tuition and fees waived)

Minnesota (certain veterans qualify for a de facto scholarship of up to $1,000 per semester, which caps at $10,000 total)

Montana (in-state combat veterans who were honorably discharged and used up all their GI Bill benefits may qualify for a full tuition waiver at state colleges and universities)

North Dakota (too complicated to list here, suffice it to say, they have a program)

South Dakota (very complicated program that waives tuition and fees for certain qualified veterans based on the amount of time they spent on Active Duty)

Wisconsin (full waiver for tuition and fees for qualified veterans — honorable discharge, wartime service being the big discriminators)

California (Medal of Honor recipients)

New Mexico, Montana, and Wisconsin get special shout-outs for being the best in class (again, from the perspective of a veteran) when it comes to educational benefits, though they have pretty tight definitions for who qualifies. If you meet the standard, their educational benefit package is about on par with those of Connecticut and Texas.

That’s 18 states, out of 50. And if you don’t live in one of those states, it probably doesn’t occur to you to consider that. It’s rarely worth moving to take advantage of such a thing. But if one is thinking about starting a family, and the military is an important part of one’s traditions, and one can see encouraging one’s children to serve (as I have), it’s worth looking into the benefits of living in certain states; even those that are not typically considered “veteran friendly.”

In addition to the benefits listed for veterans, as mentioned earlier many states (including some not listed here) offer support, grants, tuition and/or fee waivers for dependents, spouses, and children. Veterans with service-connected disabilities are encouraged to look at which educational benefits and support may be offered to their children.

When one considers how little many nations do on behalf of their veterans, it’s good to feel a sense of pride at what the U.S. federal and state governments do on behalf of their veteran populations. There is a strong pact at both the national and local levels between veterans and their communities. It’s just a matter of evaluating one’s benefits, and getting them to work for you.

TOP READS IN MONEY & FINANCE

Retail investors are liking Treasury Bills. 1 month to 1 year yielding around 5.28%. What is this the 1990s???

Companies are betting that short-term debt, while more expensive, will give greater flexibility when the cost of long-term debt decreases (soon, they hope).

Banks are loading up on risky “hot” deposits. They’ve held this much in the past, but never accumulated so much so quickly.

24-hour options are very hot with amateur traders now, but are seen as little more than lottery tickets — 50/50 propositions at best, pull-of-the-handle slot machines.

TOP READS IN THE MILITARY

Democratic leaders in Africa warily eye generals after a spate of coups in Africa. What if those countries are just sort of done with democracy?

General Mike Minihan of Air Mobility Command would like the Air Force units that participated in the evacuation of Kabul July - August 2021 to receive a prestigious award.

The Air Force is on pace to miss its recruiting goals for the first time in over 2 decades. We need more of the spirit Ukrainians demonstrate when it comes to an appetite to serve.

The White House is taking issue with a Republican proposal that includes bumping enlisted pay by up to 30% next year. Of course, there’s also a bunch of weird culture war b.s. they slammed into the bill to make it impassable.

TOP READS FOR VETERANS

The next deputy secretary at the VA will be a woman — the first to fill such a job. She’s also an Army vet!

A notorious veteran of the Army — ex-Major Nidal Hasan — has had the death penalty upheld in his martyr attack which left 13 dead on then-Fort Hood.

TOP READS AROUND THE WORLD

Lyft rolls out service to match women passengers with women drivers. Sounds like a decent idea, but I can already think of one way this is bound to go off the rails off the top of my head…

Ecuador is doing everything in its power to become more ecologically friendly. This isn’t going over as well as some might imagine.

Interesting article about how AI works — still doesn’t answer the problem of AI, which is its “hallucinations” or “lies.”

Putin doing what he does best — causing chaos and meddle in American politics.

HUMOR

This is a joke about the time capsule they dug up at West Point.