Starting Aug, 1, 2009, eligible student-veterans will receive improved education benefits under the Post 9/11 Veterans Education Act which was signed into law this past summer.
The bill, which was introduced by Senators Jim Webb, D-Va., and Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., will provide veterans with several improvements to the existing Montgomery GI Bill.
IU Southeast currently has 150 VA students.
Veterans will now receive full tuition up to the most expensive in-state public college. IUS students will be fully covered. They will also receive a $1000 stipend for books and supplies and a living allowance equal to the basic allowance for housing rate of an E-5 with dependents as determined by school’s zip code. IU Southeast students can expect $930 a month.
These benefits are figures which will apply to service members who have either served 36 months on active duty after September 11, 2001, or those who have served at least 30 days on active duty and have been discharged due to a service-connected disability.
Veterans who have served for less time will receive lower percentages of these maximum benefits.
In addition to the service requirements, veterans must have been given an honorable, hardship, existed prior to service, or condition interfered with duty discharge.
Students currently using the Montgomery G.I. Bill will still be able to use the Post 9/11 Veterans Education Act.
IUS Veterans Affairs administrators, ROTC officers and student veterans were pleased with the new legislation.
“The Post 9/11 Veterans Education Act is a welcomed program for the military to transfer assets to our families,” Lt. Col Kevin Raybine, IUS Air Force ROTC officer and career service man said.
The bill will allow all service members to transfer their education benefits to one of their dependents instead of using it for themselves.
Retired Army 1st Sgt Jack Howell, IUS Veterans affairs representative, said the change was long overdue.
“It is about time [the government] caught up with the true cost of tuition,” Howell said.
The new GI Bill will pay a stipend for living expenses– an expenditure that often forces students to work full time.
“I wouldn’t be able to go to school if it weren’t for the existing GI Bill,” Derrick Holdridge, journalism sophomore, said.
Holdridge left the Marine Corps last year.
During his four years in the Marines, he was deployed to Afghanistan once and Iraq twice.
He currently works full-time as a server at Vincenzo’s in Louisville.
“Hopefully, when this new bill starts, I can work part-time and have more time to study,” Holdridge said.
Several organizations, including the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Student Veterans of America and the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, lobbied for the bill.
Their champion was Virginia Senator Jim Webb, a former Marine and Vietnam Veteran who introduced the bill on Jan. 3, 2007, his first day in office.
After World War II, returning veteran’s education was covered by the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944 which paid the full cost of tuition, fees and boarding.
A 1988 congressional study showed that for every $1 spent on the original GI Bill $7 was returned to the economy through productivity, consumer spending and tax revenue.
Though the new bill did receive the necessary support to become a law, it was met with opposition.
Senators John McCain, R-Ariz., Lindsey Graham, R-SC, and Richard Burr, R-NC, had drafted their own bill — an improved version of the current Montgomery GI Bill aimed at increasing retention by offering higher incentive for continued service — and they were concerned that Webb’s Post 9/11 Veterans Education Act would negatively affect reenlistment rates.
McCain was absent from the vote, and drew criticism from Sen. Barack Obama. D-Ill., his opponent in the upcoming presidential election.
By MICHAEL MARCELL
Staff Writer
mdmarcel@ius.edu