Veteran Students Pinched by Aid Delay

[andrewjs18]

I'm not in the military or a veteran, but this is crap...not only are they under paid, but now have to deal with this political BS!

link: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009...hed-aid-delay/

After five years of active duty in the Army and four days into his second year at the University of Iowa, Drew Mangler is unsure how he will pay his rent.

Mangler, like roughly 60 other UI students, applied for financial aid for the new Post-9/11 GI Bill. But, to the veterans' dismay, only three have been processed.

"I worked all summer, so hopefully, that will cover [rent]," he said. "But I'll probably have to get another job."

The new legislation, which was signed into law this month, includes more benefits than the Veterans Education Assistance Program, which student/veterans relied on in the past — and they can still use for assistance.

Mangler said he needs the extra benefits the new bill provides, however, because it pays 100 percent of his tuition.

"The way the original bill worked, we only had a flat rate of $40,000, which doesn't cover four years of tuition at the UI," he said.

In addition, the new program includes a monthly living allowance and book stipend of $1,000 per year.

But with classes underway, and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs telling school officials there will be a six- to eight-week delay, most students who signed up for the new bill don't know when to expect their money.

On Monday, the Veterans Affairs Web site showed 211,251 veteran applications for financial aid still pending. At this time last year, there were 43,522.

Veterans began applying for the new bill on May 1, but the schools couldn't send the requests to the veterans department until July 7.

Herald "Skip" Kempnich, who handles all of the UI student veterans' requests for financial aid, said the UI is in better shape than many schools because he sent in applications the first day he was allowed.

"Some private schools who haven't reported their tuition yet — who knows when [those vets] are going to get their money," he said.

Some schools wait to send in vets' applications until they receive the students' credit of eligibility — which shows how long a student was deployed — to check if the student qualifies for the Yellow Ribbon Program, Kempnich said.

Under the program, Yellow Ribbon schools — which includes some private schools and graduate programs — must offer vets a scholarship for half of their tuition and fees. The veterans department matches the cost.

But Kempnich doesn't wait to check vets eligibility for the Yellow Ribbon. Instead, he sends in requests as early as possible, he said.

"I made sure that [my veterans] at least get the minimum amount," Kempnich said. "Then, if needed, I upgrade them to a Yellow Ribbon if they're eligible."

Normally, if a UI bill is past due, the student can't use his or her ID card for charging. But UI Cashier Marty Miller said the university will not penalize the vets this semester for an overdue bill in this case.

"We're trying to be as lenient as we can not to penalize students when it's out of their control," Miller said.

Kempnich said regional processing centers for the veterans department are hiring hundreds of new employees to ease the crunch, but that has also created problems.

"Some are overstaffing, and these new employees need more [supervision]," Kempnich said.

UI junior Jesse Boland, who also enrolled for the Post-9/11 GI Bill, said he will have to use money from his savings in the meantime

But he isn't exactly shocked about the delay.

"I've been in the military for a while, so I'm not totally surprised by the backlog," he said. "I expected it."

[sttaffy]

To be frank that seems like a case of the veterans affairs staff at the school either having their head up their butt, being lazy, or being overwhelmed. I've been going to Penn State Abington for the last 2 years - everybody involved in vets affairs is so on the ball it's ridiculous. I was all set a month before school started.

I was proactive, though, and it's probably safe to assume some of these vets that have their benefits packages at the back of the line thought they'd just show up to school and everything would take care of itself. There's a bit of a process, I did it twice, once for the old GI bill and once for the new, and if you don't get your ducks lined up for yourself then you, the individual vet have to take a large part of the responsibility. I hope they learn a little bit of a lesson at least, or get a tiny fuzzy idea that if they'd done their shit a month earlier then they'd be set.

I think this sucks for these guys but come on! Work for yourself - take the hour or two to familiarize yourself with the process and what you need to do and when you need to do it to get your benefits turned on. It's FREE MONEY and all you have to do is apply. The article fails to mention all of these guys will get all of their benefits back-payed to them from the day they applied along with their first check.

To me this just smacks of people either not being informed or just not thinking ahead.

I am so grateful for the GI bill and especially for the new one, it's putting me through school, putting a roof over my head and food in my guts. Complaints are not warranted.

[MikeB0]

This sucks for these Veterans, but it's just another example of the government artificially increasing the costs of education. When the government through the GI bill, guaranteed loans, subsidies, etc. provides money available to various people it increases the amount of money able to be spent on a limited resource. When this happens it will obviously increase the cost of an item such as education in the supply/demand model.

The cost of education has increased dramatically the more the government has poured money into paying for it. It will continue to do so in the future. At the same time people are told they can't make good money without a college degree. This is in fact false. It doesn't take a college degree to earn a good living and in fact many people even with a college degree don't work in the same field they have a degree in.

[sttaffy]

I think that things like student loans and state grants and pell grants have a far greater impact on tuition than the GI Bill, which until this month was only a modest stipend paid to the student - no payments to the school whatsoever. In fact, I don't think the old GI Bill had any impact on rising tuition costs. The over-abundance of credit is a big problem, possibly the biggest. If student loans weren't there for people to pay 40k a year schools would lower tuition to within reach or go out of business.

Don't forget private universities lining their pockets - some of the big-name schools have such insane endowments they could send every student they will ever have to school for free just off of their interest earnings. They still charge 30, 40, 50k a year.

The GI Bill was meant as an investment in the country and it paid off like crazy after WWII. Sadly the benefits did not keep pace with rising tuition and the old GI Bill nowadays will pay for a year and a half at a public school (room and board and tuition and all that). The new one is pegged to the tuition of your state schools, it is a larger investment but it will pay off more with more skilled people in the US.

I know fiscally conservative people like myself don't like the government taking our money and giving it to other people who supposedly deserve or need it more than we do, but I consider my education benefits part of my compensation for my four years in the Marines. I didn't get paid shit. There were KBR guys in Iraq working 6-hour days checking tire pressures on hummers and I busted my ass for at least 14 hours a day in the same heat - as an E-5 I made something like 19k a year before taxes and they made 150k, tax free. And those guys don't get recalled from their lives and thrown back into one of the worst places on Earth.