Battling for a Diploma
Veterans find it's hard to be all they can be since the GI Bill has failed to keep pace with college tuition

By Michelle Diament
Sunday, August 5, 2007

JOEY LARMAN WAS A YEAR OUT OF HIGH SCHOOL and flipping burgers at McDonald's in King George County, Va., in 1997 when he decided that joining the Army was his best shot at getting an education and making something of himself. After he left the infantry -- four years, a wife and two children later -- he was even more determined to go to college and was counting on his military benefits to pay for it.

But it would be a long haul.

Larman, who now lives in Gaithersburg, received just enough money from his military education benefit and grants to cover Montgomery College's $1,400 tuition and other educational expenses each semester. He took night classes so he could stay home with the kids, cutting day care out of the household budget. But money was always tight. His wife made about $35,000 a year, not much for the family of four to live on in suburban Washington.

The finances got even trickier after Larman finished his associate's degree at Montgomery College and transferred to the University of Maryland in 2004 to complete his bachelor's. His tuition skyrocketed to more than $3,000 a semester. Larman took out loans to cover the difference between his tuition and his military benefit for the first year. But by the start of his senior year, he had tapped all of his benefits. All the while, bills would arrive before there was money to pay them. One time, the family's only car needed more than $1,000 in repairs and Larman had little choice but to put the charges on a credit card.

Despite the hurdles, Larman saw it through. He graduated in May 2006 from Maryland with a degree in marketing, 4 1/2 years after starting college and nearly $15,000 in debt.

"If you want something, you have to be willing to do what it takes to get it," says

Larman, 29, who now is a civilian contract specialist for the Defense Department. "Yeah, in a perfect world, you serve in the military, and you get to go to school for free. But that's not the way it is, at least not right now."

It hasn't always been this way. The idea of college benefits in exchange for military service originated with the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, legislation aimed at assimilating the 16 million troops mobilized for World War II back into civilian life. Under that law, commonly referred to as the GI Bill, the government set a generous tuition limit that picked up the entire tab of most veterans' educations and also helped with housing and other reentry costs. About half of that era's veterans took advantage of the college benefits offered.

The bill has been renewed by Congress over the decades, with changes reflecting whether the nation is at war or peace and how high veterans' benefits are on the nation's priority list. The current version -- called the Montgomery GI Bill, after the late Rep. Gillespie V. "Sonny" Montgomery (D-Miss.), a champion of veterans -- took effect in 1985 during peacetime. Veterans' advocates complain it has not kept pace with rising college tuition and increases in the cost of living, and there are two bills afloat in Congress that seek to reform it.

Currently, most veterans max out their benefits at $38,700 for their entire college education. Meanwhile, the total cost of in-state tuition, fees, room and board at this country's public four-year universities averaged $46,817 over the past four years, according to the College Board. That figure doesn't take into account books or living expenses such as health care.

Enlistees who want educational benefits must contribute $1,200 during their first year of service. In exchange, veterans who enlisted for active duty later receive $1,075 a month (or slightly more if they contribute an extra $600 anytime during their service) for up to 36 months, or four academic years, as full-time students. The benefit must be used within 10 years of military discharge. Like Larman, many of today's veterans are older and apt to have families, which can make the financial and time limits challenging.

These days, 95 percent of enlistees pay into the GI Bill program. Of those, 29 percent never use the benefits. And, just 9 percent redeem the full amount they're eligible for. Officials at the Department of Veteran Affairs emphasize that 71 percent of veterans in the program use some portion of the education benefit, more than ever. But the VA doesn't track how many veterans complete degrees.

Veterans using the benefit are taking on multiple jobs, crashing with Mom and Dad, putting tuition on credit cards and taking out student loans to make ends meet, advocates say. "You have these soldiers coming back, and they want to go to school as a way to decompress, and they're having to work two to three jobs to make it," says Patrick Campbell, legislative director at the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.

Campbell was a combat medic in the National Guard in Iraq and now works full time while using the GI Bill to attend law school full time at Catholic University, a route that for many veterans would be simply too overwhelming. "You're either going to get a full-time job or go live on Mama's couch and go to school. And you don't want to live on Mama's couch after a year overseas," he says.

Both bills under consideration in Congress would eliminate the $1,200-contribution requirement and increase the benefit to reflect the cost of schooling today. Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Iraq veteran Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-Pa.) introduced legislation in May that would provide for full tuition, fees, books, and room and board for eight semesters. A similar bill, introduced in January by Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.), a former Marine and Navy secretary, would also offer veterans full tuition and housing. In addition, Webb's bill includes a monthly stipend of $1,000 and increases the amount of time veterans have to use their benefit from 10 to 15 years after discharge.

Updating the GI Bill, Webb says, is a cost of war. "If you're not going to take care of people you send to war, don't send them to war," he says. But, he argues, it's a cost with a clear return. He cited a 2007 government report that concluded that World War II veterans who took advantage of their educational benefits had higher earnings, lower rates of post-traumatic stress disorder and an easier time readjusting to civilian life than those who did not. "You don't lose money when you pour it into people's heads," Webb says.

In recruiting offices nationwide, however, a different scenario is playing out. Slick advertising brochures highlight a $72,900 college benefit, an amount that most recruits will not be eligible for because it factors in bonuses reserved for enlistees with special skills or those who commit to jobs that are difficult to fill. But the message seems to work. A 2004 survey commissioned by the Army found that educational benefits were the most common reason cited by young adults for considering enlistment.

The benefits are what sold Edwin Cadena, 23. As a senior at Westfield High School in Chantilly, Cadena had his sights set on college. With high grades and a résumé full of extracurricular activities such as soccer, track and salsa dancing, Cadena was admitted to the University of Virginia. Just one thing stood in his way -- money.

So instead, with his college acceptance letter in hand, Cadena signed on a different dotted line. He enlisted in the Marine Corps and, for four years, served as an amphibious assault vehicle commander. Cadena deployed to Fallujah, Iraq, in 2005 and, with limited infantry in the area, found himself patrolling streets and knocking on doors in search of machine guns, artillery rounds and materials insurgents use to produce improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. He once watched an explosion engulf troops just 500 feet from him. Another time, a roadside bomb detonated next to his vehicle, leaving him unconscious.

Even so, Cadena figured his benefits from the GI Bill would help make his service worthwhile. But when his service was up, Cadena realized he still wouldn't have enough money to attend U-Va., even with in-state tuition. Today, Cadena gets about $1,200 a month from the GI Bill. He lives with his parents to save on rent and has a part-time job making $12 an hour scanning and entering forms into corporate databases. Even with Northern Virginia Community College's comparatively low tuition of about $1,100 a semester, Cadena can't afford to get a place of his own. Once he finishes his associate's degree next spring, he hopes to transfer to one of Virginia's public four-year universities, where he'll likely pay at least three times as much in tuition alone.

"The college money was primarily the reason why I joined," he says. But "every year college tuition goes up and up. So every month you can get that money, and it's worth less and less."

Michelle Diament is a freelance writer. She can be reached at michellediament@gmail.com.