From Service To Success: Making Veterans Feel Welcome On Campus
During the recent Memorial Day weekend, in addition to enjoying holiday barbecues, many Americans remember the sacrifices of our veterans in fighting for freedom and democracy. To honor those who have served the country, the US has provided generous benefits for higher education for Veterans. The original Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, popularly known as the 'GI Bill,' was intended to remedy the problems of returning veterans by providing tuition and fees for college, stipends, loans for homes and businesses and counseling. By 1947, veterans comprised nearly 50% of college enrollments, and from 1944 to 1956, nearly half of the 16 million World War II veterans participated in education and training programs, with over 2 million attending colleges and universities. The GI bill was updated in 1984 and again in 2008 to increase support for veterans to include not only full tuition for public colleges but additional funds for housing and books. By 2020, 54% of eligible veterans had taken advantage of these benefits personally, with thousands more transferring their benefits to a spouse or child.
Despite generous funding levels for the GI bill, amounting to $108 billion between 2009 and 2020, many gaps exist in fully supporting veterans as they navigate through the complicated federal documentation requirements. In recent years the number of beneficiaries has been dropping, decreasing by 22% between 2016 and 2021. In addition, the utilization of the benefits varies by military branches, with some branches such as the Air Force seeing less than half of the veterans using their GI Bill benefits. Another problem many veterans have is choosing among a vast array of higher education providers, which include many for-profit institutions that target veterans with aggressive marketing tactics. Some of these institutions have been shown to have questionable business practices such as raising costs on veterans once they are enrolled and misleading veterans into large amounts of student debt. In 2017, seven of the 10 colleges receiving the most GI funds spent less than one-third of the tuition they charged the VA for educating the veterans, and for those schools, only 28% of veterans completed a degree. Some of the more ruthless institutions faced legal action and prosecution, slowing but not stopping these practices. By 2021, the for-profit institutions still served 18% of GI bill beneficiaries, with lower completion rates, lagging by 15% compared to non-profit public colleges, even after controlling for the student's characteristics.
To reduce the incentive among for-profit providers to target veterans, the US federal government in 2021 revised the cap that for-profit institutions could receive from federal funding to include veterans' benefits, reducing some of the ruthless practices among some of these institutions. And while these reforms have reduced some of the fraudulent practices, the government has created a vast and complicated regulatory system to certify eligibility to receive benefits. Many military veterans struggle with opaque and burdensome rules for documenting and certifying their status and eligibility, and often face delays in benefits, with inadequate lines of communication between institutions and the federal government making it extremely difficult to get help. The result is that many veterans are caught in the middle between large and slow bureaucracies on university campuses and at the federal government.
To help solve this problem, a new company known as MilVet Navigator is working to streamline the processes for both veteran and military-connected students and staff within the higher education institutions. MilVet's goal is to improve student experience and outcome, and institution efficiency, bandwidth, and compliance. MilVet's mission was founded to empower the higher education military community. Dr. Mahdi Omar and Paul DeCecco, founded the company in 2023. Dr. Omar spent more than 20 years in higher education and technology fields and Mr. DeCecco is a 29-year Army veteran followed by 8 years working in higher education.
After witnessing the ordeal that many military-affiliated students suffered in using their benefits, Dr. Omar and his team created a new scalable, cost-effective, and highly secure Software-as-a-Service solution that lessens the burdens on both the veteran and military-connected students, and higher education institutions. In an interview, Omar noted that Student Information Systems were not built with the VA and DoD benefits in mind. Such systems have modules to meet the business needs of multiple administrative offices such as admissions, financial aid, enrollment, advising, and others, but offer nearly nothing in the way of VA/DoD benefit management or functionality, failing to address the unique challenges faced by this population. Thus, institutions are forced to rely on spreadsheets, disconnected databases, and manual workarounds leading to fragmented and labor-intensive processes that introduce errors, slow down approvals, and create compliance risks.
The problem is both a lack of staffing and a lack of modern systems, according to Omar. For a university to manage a veteran and their benefits, the veteran and military-connected student has to work with a 'certifying official' who is a specialist in getting the students to provide the complicated paperwork for getting their benefits and then managing the communication with the federal government to release the funds for the student. Omar notes that 'the VA recommends that for every 125 students, you need at least a single school certifying official.' Omar added, 'we have done a survey, and the average ratio is 570 and some schools have 700 to one.'
The thicket of federal regulations is just one of 'two baskets' of problems facing a veteran student, according to DeCecco, who says 'the first basket is their regular support in terms of their transition from military life to civilian life and their needs in the process,' while 'the second basket is their benefits and the processing of their benefits.' Instead of having a modern system for managing benefits, most universities 'do everything in a spreadsheet and sticky notes' according to Omar. MilVet Navigator system, by contrast, offers a system that automatically tracks a student as they enroll in courses and help complete certifications, calculates tuition and fees, and communicates proactively with students by email and even SMS messages to help them effortlessly update their status with the university and the federal government. The result is that the documentation workload of the certifying officials has reduced substantially, making it possible for them to better support the students with the other problems they might face.
Mr. DeCecco, understands the problems of veterans deeply, having completed his graduate degree and with deep roots in the military. DeCecco says that 'the GI Bill is utterly amazing as a tool for veterans to be able to use - but it was not designed for people to be able to both live and pay for college.' DeCecco describes how a veteran will 'get out, maybe try and get a job, with all the stresses of family life, and then they're sitting in classrooms with 18, 19, 20-year-olds.' As DeCecco describes it, the student is asking 'how do I do this in the civilian world? I've spent 4,8, 20 years in the military community, military culture away from normal civilian life. And now I'm being asked to completely reintegrate into that.'
The good news is that with these new systems like MilVet Navigator, colleges and universities can focus on helping our veterans and military-connected students do this reintegration. MilVet team is currently working on additional features and functionalities to facilitate student communities and student connections and mentorships. These new tools will help foster social and support communities among students, veteran staff, advisors and others noted DeCecco. Staff can also use these tools to facilitate events, such as barbecues for veteran and military-connected students. These efforts, when made possible by streamlined information systems, allows for a university to 'build that sense of community to have an event like a barbecue be the catalyst so that people feel welcome.' DeCecco adds, 'I can't understate the importance of that feeling and building that sense of community in working with military veterans and their family members.'
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