MAE 2009 Volume: 4 Issue: 6 (November/December)
Two firms received contracts worth a total of more than $220 million to provide personnel, equipment, tools, materials, supervision and other services to the U.S. Army Continuing Education System (ACES).
Arlington, Va.-based Axseum Solutions received a $118.7 million contract while Rockville, Md.-based Mes won a $101.6 million contract from the U.S. Army Contracting Center of Excellence on behalf of ACES.
Private Student Loans Face New Oversight
The House Financial Service Committee in late October voted in favor of creating a new agency with oversight of consumer loans such as mortgages, credit cards and student loans issued by private companies without federal backing. Currently, a number of different regulatory bodies oversee various aspects of consumer credit.
The 39-29 vote in favor of the Consumer Financial Protection Agency Act of 2009, or H.R. 3126, had White House backing. President Obama in a statement said that the agency, if created, “will prevent predatory lending practices and other abuses and will ensure that consumers get clear information they can understand about financial products like credit cards and mortgages,” the Los Angeles Times and other news outlets reported.
VA Launches Outreach, Emergency Funding Efforts
In the wake of widespread reports that the Department of Veterans Affairs has been slow to mail out checks, the VA said recently that it would launch a new educational outreach effort for veterans around the country to make sure they know about or are already receiving their benefits. VA representatives were expected in mid-October to begin telephoning veterans throughout the country to explain the Post-9/11 GI Bill and find out whether those who already signed up for benefits have been receiving them.
Various VA officials in public comments this fall have acknowledged and apologized for the delays in payments to some servicemembers. Tammy Duckworth, the VA’s assistant secretary of public and intergovernmental affairs, said in a speech to attendees of George Washington University’s “Welcome Home to Washington” symposium on veterans’ education issues on October 23 in Washington, D.C., that the VA was sorry for the delay, but noted that the VA had mailed nearly $180 million in “emergency” checks of $3,000 to those veterans reporting that they had not yet received benefit checks.
The VA on October 2 began issuing the checks at its 57 regional benefits offices, though it also said it was sending out representatives to areas with students not very near those particular offices.
“We’re working hard to fix the problems we’ve had with the GI Bill,” Duckworth said at the symposium. “We’ve been averaging about 3,000 hours of overtime each weekend. I know that there are veterans here who are waiting for their payments, and I’m here to say that I’m sorry. I’m sorry you have to wait. But it’s the beginning of the semester and we’re learning.”
The VA said that in its phone calls to veterans, it would not ask for personal information such as birthdates or bank account or social security numbers, though it might ask family members for contact information from those veterans away at school. In the meantime, Duckworth and others have noted, the VA is continuing to work on and improve its automated systems so that the process of issuing benefits goes more quickly.
Lumina/ACE Report Studies GI Bill’s Likely Effects
The new Post-9/11 GI Bill will likely spur more enrollment by servicemembers in full-time undergraduate programs—and at more expensive colleges and universities— compared with years past under other DoD education benefit schemes, concluded a recent report funded by the Lumina Foundation for Education and the American Council on Education.
The report, “Military Service Members and Veterans in Higher Education: What the New GI Bill May Mean for Postsecondary Institutions,” written by Alexandria Walton Radford of MPR Associates, notes that publicity surrounding the new benefits will likely benefit both servicemembers and schools, given that in 2007-2008, only half of military-affiliated undergraduates at public universities received veterans education benefits. The number receiving such benefits was even smaller at other types of colleges and universities—about one-third of total undergrads, according to the report.
“In the past, military undergraduates have been concentrated at public two-year colleges, but the more generous education benefits of the new GI Bill may encourage them to seek entry into more expensive colleges, particularly if those colleges demonstrate responsiveness to military students’ needs,” Walton Radford concluded in the report. “Based on attendance patterns among past benefit recipients, it appears that military undergraduates receiving the new benefits may be more likely to enroll full time and for the full year than previous military undergraduates.”
Among other things, the report also notes the difficulty schools have historically had in getting help from the Department of Veterans Affairs for information on DoD education benefits, the lack of knowledge in the past by campus administrators of military education benefits, and the difficulty reported by many veterans over the years in obtaining college credit at some schools for their military experience.
The report also notes statistics in its executive summary that give some sense of the experiences of military undergraduates in higher education in years past. For instance:
• Military undergrads accounted for just 4 percent of all undergrads enrolled in postsecondary education in 2007-2008.
• Around 43 percent of military undergrads went to two-year public schools during that same school year, while 21 percent attended public four-year colleges. About 12 percent went to private for-profit four-year colleges, and about 12 percent went to private not-for-profit four-year colleges.
• About 47 percent of military undergrads in 2007-2008 pursued associate degrees while 42 percent pursued bachelor’s degrees. The full report is available online at www.acenet.edu.