[AISD-Watch] Fighting for a Diploma

Fighting for a Diploma

By Elisabeth Salemme

So much for one weekend a month, two weeks a year.
Since Sept. 11, nearly 425,000 National Guard and
reserve troops have been deployed to Iraq and
Afghanistan. Like temp workers with no benefits,
however, these citizen-soldiers find that when they
leave the reserve forces, they are not entitled to the
same tuition assistance as regular Army veterans.

To some lawmakers like Virginia Senator Jim Webb, this
double standard is unconscionable. The former Navy
Secretary and highly decorated Vietnam vet is trying
to goad Congress into updating the G.I. Bill, whose
benefits have failed to keep pace with the rising cost
of a college education, by providing full tuition to a
state university plus a $1,000 monthly stipend to all
veterans who have served a total of two years in Iraq
or Afghanistan since 9/11--reserve forces included.
His rationale for extending equal benefits to National
Guard veterans: "Same battlefield, same soldier."

Sounds fair, right? Not to the U.S. departments of
Defense and Veterans Affairs, with each testifying
last month that giving all veterans the same benefits
could hurt National Guard retention as well as
active-duty recruitment. Tom Bush, the Defense
Department's principal director of manpower and
personnel (and no relation to the President), says
that for active-duty service members, tuition
assistance is a powerful recruiting tool. In fact,
according to a 2004 survey commissioned by the Army,
education benefits were the most common incentive
cited by young adults considering an enlistment.

Those benefits are also a good reason for National
Guard members to keep renewing their commitments.
Under the current G.I. Bill, Guard members and
reservists who have spent two years in Iraq or
Afghanistan get $860 a month in tuition assistance if
they attend college full time (compared with the
$1,075 a month that active-duty veterans receive), but
this benefit ends the moment they leave the Guard.
Bush also argues that reservists don't need as much
help transitioning to civilian life. "They can go back
to their jobs, but an active-duty member is really
changing careers," he says.

Aside from retention issues, Webb's bill faces another
significant hurdle: cost. The VA estimates that the
price tag for improving education benefits for
post-9/11 veterans would be $74.7 billion through
2017. Webb counters by pointing to 1944, when the G.I.
Bill was expanded to give tuition benefits to all
service members who fought in World War II. "Nobody
asked these financial questions when they had 8
million returning veterans," he says.

The funding question is worse at the state level. In
Missouri a bill that would have significantly cut
costs for all vets at state universities stalled in
May because state schools pleaded that the proposed
benefits would cost them nearly $2 million a year.
Says Scott Charton, spokesman for the University of
Missouri: "If the state feels that this is a priority,
then it's worth it for the state to fund it."

Meanwhile, California's cash-strapped state
legislature is debating whether to approve Governor
Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposal to start allocating
tuition-assistance funds to help boost membership in
the 20,000-strong California Guard. Democratic state
senator Lou Correa sent a letter to his colleagues
this summer urging them to fund the additional
benefits for Guard members. "A lot of these guys are
losing their jobs, their houses, their cars because
they're being called back to Iraq for a third time,"
Correa says. "Would we try to deny tuition assistance
to World War II veterans? What's the difference
between those heroes and these heroes?" The answer may
be our fiscal priorities.

* Find this article at:
* http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1653634,00.html
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