Family Education
Written by Kenya McCullum
Many Scholarships, Tuition Assistance
Programs and Educational Resources Exist
for Military Spouses and Dependents.
Military Spouse Career Advancement Accounts: This program, hosted through www.militaryonesource.com, offers up to $6,000 in funding to military spouses enrolled in programs that prepare them for careers that can survive frequent moves, such as financial services, health services, homeland security and information technology.
For more information, go to http://caa.milspouse.org.
Military Officers Association of America (MOAA): This organization offers several scholarships, interest-free loans and grants for children of servicemembers earning an undergraduate degree. Among the MOAA’s funding opportunities are the American Patriot Scholarship for students under 24 whose parent died during active duty; Senior Grants to help fund students’ final year of study; and the General John Paul Ratay Educational Fund Grants for the children of surviving spouses of retired officers. In addition, MOAA’s Website, at www.moaa.org, lists many more available opportunities.
National Military Family Association (NMFA): This group, which was founded almost four decades ago by a group of military wives, offers Joanne Holbrook Patton Military Scholarships to spouses and surviving spouses of servicemembers. More information is available at www.nmfa.org.
Candace Wheeler, the organization’s deputy director of government relations, said that establishing a scholarship for military spouses became an important mission for the NMFA because, at the time, this kind of help was not available to them.
“There were not any scholarships that we could see that were really out there specifically for military spouses,” Wheeler said. “There were opportunities that were available to them, but we had been hearing from military spouses for a long time that it’s oftentimes difficult to continue their education when they move from state to state. They may have to start over at a new school in another state and sometimes they have problems applying for in-state tuition.”
Numerous other nonprofits offer scholarships for kids of servicemembers, including Scholarships for Military Children, at www.militaryscholar.org; ThanksUSA, at www. thanksusa.org; the Pat Tillman Foundation, at www.pattillmanfoundation.org; and the Air Force Sergeants Association Scholarship Program, at www.hqafsa.org; among many others.
THE NEW GI BILL BENEFITS
Post-9/11 GI Bill: Spouses and children of servicemembers that have served at least 90 days of service on or after September 11, 2001, can be eligible for tuition funding up to the maximum amount the in-state tuition costs in their location, as well as an allowance for books and a housing stipend. Expect changes to some of the details about this. For example, the recent $105 billion bill in Congress to provide supplemental funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan also includes a provision to make the children of active duty servicemembers who die in active duty eligible for the new GI Bill’s benefits. Under the original bill, benefits of servicemembers killed while on duty since September 11, 2001, could be transferred to only one dependent. That dependent would have to serve at least three years in the military to be eligible for the full benefits—a requirement removed from the new legislation, which at press time President Obama was expected to sign into law.
More information about the GI Bill rules can be found at www.gibill.va.gov.
Servicemembers Opportunity Colleges Consortium (SOC): SOC is a group of more than 1,800 colleges and universities dedicated to the special needs of students in military families. To make it easier to enroll in associate, bachelor and graduatelevel programs, these institutions have agreed to review each school’s programs and negotiate credit transfer guarantees so that when these students move from installation to installation, they will not be forced to start their studies over from scratch. More information about SOC can be found at www.soc.aascu.org.
General higher education services: Although military-specific resources are an excellent way to fund higher education, Sue Hoppin, the MOAA’s deputy director for spouse outreach, advises that students also remember to pursue traditional funding options such as federal loans, Pell Grants and work-study programs. “So often we pigeonhole ourselves and say: ‘We’re a military family. We just need to look at the military benefits,’” Hoppin said.
School-specific programs: Numerous colleges and universities offer scholarships or at least discounts for military servicemembers’ spouses and dependents. They also often tout campus or online services designed to help military families in various ways.
For example, Robert Morris University (RMU) in Pittsburgh established an outreach center in 2005 to help entrepreneurial veterans and their spouses start their own businesses. In conjunction with the U.S. Small Business Administration, the center provides grants and educational programs for these new business owners. In addition, RMU is the in the process of building a services center that is scheduled to open this fall that will offer such things as Webcasting, to allow military spouses to communicate with deployed husbands and wives.
Dr. Susan Aldridge, president of the University of Maryland University College, which has a large military student population, noted that her school and others as well offer various scholarships for military spouses and dependents that are supported by private donors.
“We see so many spouses that are moving at such a frequent rate that they stop and start their educations; they have a difficult time completing their education,” Aldridge said. “We’ve received a number of large donations from individuals specifically to support military spouses. So it’s fulfilling a huge, unmet need out there, to get an education that will be mobile as they move from location to location. And I’m hoping that in the next couple of years we’ll see more attention paid to this by the Obama administration, to provide more funding for this type of education.”
In addition to scholarships and other sources of funding for tuition, there are also other kinds of free resources available to military spouses and dependents who go or plan to go to college. The eKnowledge Corp., for example, at www.eknowledge.com, has donated several million dollars to fund the distribution of free SAT and ACT test preparation programs for servicemembers, veterans and their dependents who are planning to apply to college programs. ♦