Sent in by Veterans News and Information Services
By Jim Garamone WASHINGTON -- The cost of continuing your education just
got cheaper.
A uniform tuition assistance policy affecting all the
services went into effect Oct. 1, Pentagon officials said.
All services now pay 75 percent of undergraduate and
graduate level tuition and related costs up to ceilings of
$187.50 per semester hour and $3,500 per year, said Otto
Thomas, DoD director of continuing education.
Roughly 400,000 service members receive tuition assistance
each year. Less than 10 percent received it to the degree
that they would have hit the ceiling, Thomas said.
The annual ceiling would help cover about 18 semester hours
of studies at expensive schools and considerably more at
cheaper ones. Service members would have to spend nearly
$1,200 out of pocket to hit the ceiling, and those who do
can apply for waivers, although DoD officials are not
encouraging that.
Thomas said the ceiling is a compromise -- some officials
wanted more money. But tuition assistance is meant to
support part-time student programs. Service members are
full-time members of the military, and being full-time
students, in addition, is difficult. Even with the
compromise, service members attending a modestly priced
school would have to be full-time students to hit the
ceiling -- and they probably don't have that kind of free
time, he said.
In the past, the services had individual tuition policies.
Soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines could be in the same
college class and yet be reimbursed differently. The
services also had established different amounts they would
pay for different college levels. “One service, for
example, might pay a certain amount for undergraduate work
and a different amount for graduate work,” Thomas said.
Another service even broke that down, paying less for
freshman and sophomore level courses than for junior/senior
courses.
The October 1995 Quality of Life Task Force Report, also
known as the Marsh Report, after the group chairman, former
Army Secretary John O. Marsh, recommended the uniform
approach.
American Forces Press Service
