“It’s lean pickings. The Army guys have their tuition programs, but there are hardly any scholarships that I’m aware of,” Ralph Rodriguez, an education officer at the U.S. Army Education Center, Fort Sam Houston, Texas, told Military Advanced Education.

That’s generally the case because most soldiers are eligible for the Army’s tuition assistance program, which awards up to $250 per semester credit hour or up to $750 for the average three-credit course.

“So you could get about six classes a year if they cost $250 per hour,” Rodriguez calculated. “For those who choose a more expensive college like the University of Phoenix, they use the Montgomery GI Bill program to cover the difference.”

Soldiers can monitor their financial assistance eligibility through the portal available at GoArmyEd (https://www.earmyu.com/Login.aspx). Active duty soldiers can create electronic records with programs established through their education counselors. Once enrolled in a college course, the portal communicates between the college and the Army while informing students of their financial obligations.

“It warns you when you are running out of money that has been allocated,” Rodriguez explained. “You can select the top-off amount from the GI Bill. It produces a form that you take to the local education officer, who signs off on it, and then it is processed at the VA [Department of Veterans Affairs]. Then they send you a check for the difference. So if you owed $200 or $300, that’s what the VA would send you. That puts you right at 100 percent. That leaves very little room for scholarship opportunities.”

Currently, the GI Bill offers students about $40,000, payable in installments of $1,100 a month over 36 months of eligibility. Servicemembers pay into the GI Bill system with an initial contribution of $1,200, but they receive the college benefits in return. In addition, they have the opportunity to pay an additional $600 for another $100 a month for each of the 36 months of GI Bill eligibility, potentially adding $3,600 to the overall financial benefits.

Competitive Scholarships

Servicemembers and their families seeking scholarship opportunities can compete for awards listed online in large scholarship databases.

The jobs megasite Monster.com has a subsidiary called FastWeb, which offers one of the most comprehensive databases of scholarships available online (http://www.fastweb.com). Users from all walks of life can register and provide some basic information, including level of education to date, education goals for the future, and current contact information such as mailing and e-mail addresses. The FastWeb site claims to provide access to more than 250,000 scholarships linked to a student’s intended major. After filling out quite a few forms and declining numerous advertising offers, students can complete their online profiles, even indicating their military service.

The scholarship database at Scholarships.com also offers the opportunity to find scholarship money for specific schools or based on specific experiences such as military service (http://www.scholarships.com). Students can fill out a detailed profile on the Website, which will return information on opportunities that match their profiles. For example, a search for a student with military experience turned up a scholarship offered by The Council of College and Military Educators. Servicemembers could compete for a $500 scholarship based on a 200-300 word essay.

The College Board, the organization responsible for administering the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), also offers a robust scholarship database (http://apps.collegeboard.com/cbsearch_ss/welcome.jsp). The site lists scholarships, internships, grants and loans matched to the specific goals and backgrounds of students. The site claims to offer access to more than 2,300 sources that could help pay for college with an estimated total money pool of $3 billion. The site also offers a wonderful quick search, which enables students in a hurry to bypass the tedious multiple forms and advertisements of some of the other large scholarship databases. Simply punching a keyword into the quick search returns instant listings. Unfortunately, punching in the keyword “military” only turned up 10 scholarships, several of which were for dependents and several others of which offered opportunities to highly specific recipients.

The Department of Defense provides an online resource called Military OneSource (https://www.militaryonesource.com). The Website provides education materials, including a database of scholarship information, on its navigation menu. Once a user picks their branch of service, the Website offers a link labeled “Scholarships for Military Students.” From that page, servicemembers can browse a brief list of foundations dedicated directly to military services as well as their scholarship offerings. Once again, many of the opportunities listed here are intended for military dependents. However, the site turned up some possibilities such as $1,000 awards under the American Patriot Freedom Scholarship offered by Homefront America Inc. Students can fill out an application to apply for an award through a form on the scholarship Website.

Based on Need

Unfortunately, many military servicemembers do not qualify for any scholarships based on financial need, according to service education counselors.

“We don’t advertise scholarships too much to servicemembers,” Gil Williams, site director for the Navy College Office at Naval Base Kitsap in Bremerton, Wash., told MAE. “For most of the scholarships that we deal with, and that includes student loans, servicemembers aren’t accepted because of their income. They are not considered in need of an award because they make too much money. We do recommend scholarships to spouses all the time.”

Military servicemembers themselves are often left out of need-based scholarships because of their eligibility for tuition assistance and the Montgomery GI Bill, Williams noted, and a new pilot program offers military spouses something similar to tuition assistance.

The program, called the Career Advancement Account (CAA), is currently active at 15 military installations around the United States. The program provides financial assistance to families whose military spouse has a “portable” career, one that is in high demand, regardless of geographic location. As a servicemember relocates from one part of the country to another, his or her spouse can receive the financial benefit to maintain their jobs in high-demand fields.

“Say you are up here in Bremerton, Washington, and you have a job and your husband gets transferred to Norfolk, Virginia,” Williams commented. “Well, some jobs are in such high demand that the spouses find it pretty easy to get rehired in the same occupation wherever they go. Good examples are nursing and education. The program gives the spouse $3,000 a year for up to two years to go into one of these ‘portable’ careers.”

The Defense Department had limited the CAA program to paygrades E1-E5 and O1-O3, but those limitations have been rescinded. At his office alone, Williams fields several inquires about the program every day.

“Servicemembers who really need scholarships for themselves can turn to service organizations like the Veterans of Foreign Wars or the American Legion to inquire about scholarship opportunities as they are separating from the military,” Williams remarked. “But even many service organizations tailor most of their scholarship offerings to spouses and dependents.”

“We might send them to Navy Mutual Aid, for example, which has a pretty good scholarship program,” Williams stated. “The Military Officers Association of America usually has scholarships available. The Dolphin Scholarship Foundation, which is for the submarine force, offers scholarships to spouses. The Navy League has quite a few scholarship opportunities available to spouses and dependents.”

Spouses and Dependents

Rosalind Strickland, an education counselor at Fort Myers, Va., provided MAE with lists of scholarship information broken down by categories of eligibility. Nonprofit organizations provide educational services—including scholarship opportunities for military families—to each of the military branches.

The Navy Marine Corps Relief Society (NMCRS) offers several scholarships under its education programs, designed to help families obtain financing to achieve their college goals (http://www.nmcrs.org). NMCRS offers scholarships on the basis of financial need to qualified applicants. Applicants generally must plan to enroll or already be enrolled in a full-time program and maintain a 2.0 grade point average or better.

The NMCRS has three scholarship programs—the USS Tennessee Scholarship, Dependents of Deceased Scholarship, and the Admiral Mike Boorda Scholarship—in addition to its Vice Admiral E.P. Travers Loans program. Applicants are eligible to re-apply for the scholarship programs every academic year. The USS Tennessee Scholarship provides awards to dependent children of military servicemembers; the Dependents of Deceased to those who were dependents of combat casualties; and the Boorda Scholarship is for specific military commissioning programs.

The Fleet Reserve Association also offers a number of $5,000 scholarships under several different programs to its members and their spouses, children, and grandchildren (http://www.fra.org). Members could be active duty or retired Navy, Marine Corps or

Coast Guard personnel.

Army Emergency Relief (AER) offers a Spouse Education Assistance Program, as well as a program for dependents (http://www.aerhq.org). The dependents’ scholarship, the Major General James Ursano Scholarship Program, is for the dependent children of active, retired and deceased soldiers. Dependents seeking undergraduate college degrees can apply for scholarships based on financial need, academic achievement or leadership.

Applicants must maintain at least a 2.0 grade point average and enroll as a full-time undergraduate student at an accredited college. Qualified dependents must be younger than 23 years of age and remain unmarried for the applicable academic year.

Scholarship funds are split between fall and spring semesters and may apply to tuition, fees, books, and room and board—either on or off campus.

The Air Force Aid Society (AFAS) offers the General Henry H. Arnold Education Grant Program, which awards $2,000 for each successful applicant (http://www.afas.org). Qualified applicants must be sons and daughters of active duty, retired or deceased Air Force members, as well as the spouses of members. The program awards grants to families on a financial aid basis for those who demonstrate need.

For some programs offered by associations, a military family could be associated with any military service to qualify. The Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association (AFCEA) Education Foundation provides a number of scholarship opportunities for both servicemembers and their families (http://www.afcea.org). The AFCEA Educational Foundation provides scholarships to both undergraduate and graduate students.

Undergraduate applicants may apply for only one scholarship opportunity each academic year. Military veterans or active duty personnel are only eligible to apply as freshmen; other applicants must be enrolled as sophomores or juniors. AFCEA targets scholarships for career fields that include engineers, technicians, programmers, military career personnel and government executives.

Applicants connected to the U.S. military can apply for the Marine Sergeant Jeannette L. Winters Memorial Scholarship, the Lieutenant General Douglas D. Buchholz Memorial Scholarship, the General Emmett Paige Scholarship, the Veterans of Enduring Freedom-Afghanistan or Iraqi Freedom Scholarship, and the Disabled War Veterans Scholarship. Other scholarships are available to the general public.

The AFCEA Educational Foundation’s graduate scholarships work much the same way. Students already enrolled in graduate distance learning or online programs may apply for the AFCEA Distance Learning or Online Scholarship. In addition, eligible students can apply for the AFCEA Ph.D. Fellowship, the Computer Graphic Design Scholarship, the Milton E. Cooper/Young AFCEAN Graduate Scholarship, the Lockheed Martin Graduate Scholarship, the Ralph W. Shrader Diversity Scholarship, or the Scholarship for Working Professionals.

Finally, the National Military Family Association (NMFA) offers opportunities such as the National Military Family Association Joanne Holbrook Patton Military Spouse Scholarship Program (http://www.nmfa.org). These scholarships are awarded to spouses of active duty, Reserve, retired, or deceased servicemembers for secondary or graduate education programs. Scholarship awards vary from $500 to $1,000 each year. Students may use them for tuition, fees, and room and board. ♦