Student Veterans’ Graduation Rates Yet to Be Tracked

Maralynn Bernstein (bottom left), the veterans services coordinator for the University of Arizona, confers with Cody Nicholls, director of the Veterans Education and Transition Services Center, at the school’s Veterans Center in Tucson. Photo credit: Larry Abramson/NPR

Record numbers of veterans are returning home from war and heading to college thanks to the Post-9/11 GI Bill, which in three short years has helped 860,000 vets go to school reports Larry Abramson of National Public Radio.

But there’s little known about how these students are doing because are no national statistics on veterans’ graduation rates.Having no national data base left the door open for inaccurate information such as a recent press report that said only 3 percent of vets were getting degrees.

Veterans’ advocates quickly debunked that number, but it just pointed to a need for data.Michael Dakduk, executive director of Student Veterans of America, is working to develop a database to show what nearly 1 million new vets are doing with the $24 billion and counting that they’ve received.

The Department of Veterans Affairs also is beginning to collect and track student data.

You can listen to Larry Abramson’s story and read more about various student veterans college programs HERE.

VA Trademarks Term “GI Bill” to Fight Misleading Info

Millions of dollars in veterans benefits turned student veterans  into targets for misleading advertising by some for-profit schools. The VA’s answer was two fold:

• Join several state attorneys general and sue the company that owned GIBill.com;
• Trademark the term “GI Bill”

The VA said schools have ensnared Veterans looking for info by using official-looking websites, which funneled potential recruits to those schools without any balanced, objective information.

The company that owned GIBill.com settled, and the website was turned over to VA and now redirects to the government’s official GI Bill page.

The term ‘GI Bill’ has been trademarked and the VA is the sole owner. The Department of Veterans Affairs soon will issue terms of use for the phrase.

And the VA promised to be vigilant and monitor schools and marketing firms to ensure Veterans aren’t victims of deceptive recruitment.