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Hold off on new GI Bill changes, VA cautions

In the face of a growing pile of ideas for changing the Post-9/11 GI Bill, the head of Veterans Affairs Department’s education service is asking Congress hold off on any significant revisions to the education benefit until next year.

Keith Wilson, the education service director who has been responsible for the launch of the new program, said he understands there are lots of ideas, many of them good ones, about improving the program, but that making changes before December could interfere with efforts to develop and deploy an automated system for calculating and paying benefits.

“VA recommends postponing significant changes to the Post-9/11 GI Bill until after successful deployment of the payment system in December 2010 so that enhancements to the program do not have a negative impact on the service delivery to those clients utilizing benefits this summer and fall,” Wilson said in Feb. 25 testimony before the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee’s economic opportunity panel.

The panel is considering a wide range of changes. Bills have been introduced that would increase the fee paid to colleges for processing veterans’ education claims, expand vocational education covered by the new benefit and cover preparatory courses for college admission tests in addition to the actual tests, which are already covered.

Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, D-S.D., the subcommittee chairwoman, said she expects that a package of GI Bill changes will be prepared this year for enactment in time to apply to students attending school next fall, but she gave no indication whether these would be major or minor changes.

The bill that most worries Wilson is HR 3813, the Veterans Training Act, which would expand the Post-9/11 GI Bill to include vocational and technical training that is not covered by the new program but is covered by the older Montgomery GI Bill.

VA officials support the idea of vocational training for veterans, but they are concerned about how to integrate the benefit into the new GI Bill, which bases benefits on actual tuition and fees, he said.

“Most non-degree programs are offered on a clock-hour measurement basis, and students are generally charged tuition for the entire program versus term-by-term,” Wilson said.

A veteran enrolled in a computer training class, for example, might be charged $10,000 for a six-month course. “It is unclear how VA should determine the maximum amount payable for such a program, under the Post-9/11 GI Bill,” he said.

Another problem is that paying for technical training up front could create repayment issues if a student doesn’t finish, he said, noting that some technical schools have restrictive refund policies that would leave a veteran responsible for repaying VA if they drop out after attending a minimum of 30 days, he said.

“Depending on the tuition charges and the institution’s refund policy, this could be a significant burden for the veteran who does not complete a program,” he said.