Military tuition assistance: Its history and future
have continued to expand tuition assistance coverage ever since.
The tuition assistance program was developed to provide tuition support
for active duty personnel, similar to that provided to veterans through
their veterans’ education benefits. Its initial intent was to fund courses
and degrees selected by the service members.
As the TA program matured, leadership began to take a look at making it
available to service members with more equitable levels of distribution.
In 1992, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff asked DoD to consider
making TA policy uniform across the services. That would ensure that
service members from different services sitting in the same classroom
received the same level of TA coverage.
In 1994, the Marsh Commission on the Quality of Life in the Armed Forces
also noted the disparity in coverage and recommended that the secretary of
defense establish TA policy that afforded the same levels of coverage for
all members of the armed services. In 1996, the services eventually agreed
to a uniform TA policy; a new directive was put in place in 1997 that
implemented this uniform policy.
However, the cost of tuition had been rising and, per then-existing
policy, to accommodate for inflation in academe, the department took
action to adjust the level of coverage upward. A coordinated decision was
made in the 1999 to 2000 time frame to increase TA from a cap of $187.50
per unit up to an annual ceiling of $3,500 to a $250-per-semester unit up
to an annual ceiling of $4,500.
DoD finally implemented the new levels of coverage in October 2002.
Tuition assistance remained a key recruitment and retention tool—for
decades one of the top three reasons individuals joined and stayed in the
military. Acknowledging this, in its 2002 “New Social Compact: A
Reciprocal Partnership between the Department of Defense Service Members,
and Families,” and then the 2004 “Modernized Social Compact,” part of a
20-year plan to improve the quality of life of the military family, the
department made a commitment to members of the armed forces and their
family members to reduce their out-of-pocket costs for, among other
things, tuition assistance.
For the better part of a decade, the department made good on that
commitment.
That slowly changed. As the fiscal challenges the nation faced became
permanently affixed to the front pages of the national press, and as those
concerns became more and more the focus of political discourse, with
continuing resolutions and tightening budgets now a reality, the services
began to struggle with funding TA at what most recently became a $600
million annual price tag. But because of the positive impact that tuition
assistance has had on the troops and their families and for the potential
for a negative impact on morale if coverage was reduced, particularly
during wartime, DoD consistently insisted that the services continue the
standard level of uniform coverage.
That said, budget concerns came to a head for one of the services well
over a year ago, as it proactively sought to reduce the level of TA
coverage. This was indicative of the services as a whole looking to find
potential reductions in programs that could help better manage the dollars
available in the overall budgets. Under the circumstances, there wasn’t
much else they could do. They had to cut somewhere; the 65-plus-year TA
program became part of their focus.
Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta pulled the decision about what to do
with tuition coverage across the services into his office for ultimate
consideration.
What were some of the options available to DoD and the services when it
came to retooling the military tuition program? Discussions have been
ongoing for some time about the level of assistance that could ultimately
be provided to service members. Some of the options included everything
from reducing coverage to lower per-unit caps and annual ceilings; going
back to earlier levels of coverage, possibly at 75 percent, rather than
around 100 percent, based on rank; or having service members use the new
Post-9/11 GI Bill to pay for their education. Other options may be under
discussion, but, as of this writing, no one has announced what the final
outcome of those deliberations might be.
What are my thoughts about all of this?
Military tuition assistance has long been a program near and dear to the
military, its leadership, as well as its personnel. Commanders have
supported it since it kept their troops positively focused and occupied in
their downtime. It has been a force enhancer, key to better job
performance and readiness.
The relatively small investment made in the program speaks volumes
relevant troop morale and the impact it has on the long-term, fiscal
well-being of the nation’s military personnel. For decades, it has
prepared citizen soldiers to re-enter the nation’s communities after
separation from their services, where they continue to contribute as
leaders and good citizens across the country. So, why would leadership at
the Department of Defense chance the negative impacts reductions or
cutbacks would bring to a program so beneficial to the services, a program
that amounts to a mere rounding error in the overall DoD and service
budgets? It costs so little overall for the huge benefit it provides the
military, the service member and the nation as a whole.
If I were still working in the Pentagon, I would be working hard, albeit
upstream at times, to maintain the levels of coverage currently in place.
Not only because of the pluses noted above, but also because of the long-
term commitments that the department and the services have made to service
members over the past decade or two (in its social compacts of 2002 and
2004). And because it makes little sense to reduce a program of this
nature that provides little more than a win-win-win for all the players
involved—the services, our military personnel and our country—and to
military readiness to which it contributes so much. Why do we have to
relearn lessons like this every decade or so?
Gary Woods, former chief of DoD Voluntary Education, now heads up a
consulting firm that helps colleges and universities start up or improve
and retool their military, spouse and veterans’ programs. Visit Woods &
Associates at gawoods.com/services/.