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Joining the Military is Hazardous to Your Education The Montgomery GI Bill -- Plenty of Promises, Little Education Money We've all seen the advertisements, "Join the Army and earn up to $40,000 for college." The ads seem to say that if you join the military college is all but paid for. But only 35% of recruits receive any education benefits from the military. Most that do get money receive far less than $40,000. To find out why it's so hard to obtain the education benefits the military advertises, read on. For alternatives to enlisting, see our brochure Financing College Without Joining the Military. How Much Will You Really Get? Is This Really a GI Bill? Read the Fine Print Advertisements that offer money for college if you join the military are advertising two programs, the Montgomery GI Bill and the Army or Navy College Fund. Almost all enlistees join the Montgomery GI Bill on entering the military. Far fewer enlistees qualify for the higher benefit Army/Navy College Fund and they must also participate in the Montgomery GI Bill. In order to receive any education benefit there are several conditions that must be met. First, you must contribute $100 per month for the first twelve months of your tour. Those payments must be made for all twelve months and can't be canceled once they're begun. There is no refund of that $1200, ever. Additionally, you must receive an honorable discharge, something that 20% of all veterans don't get. The maximum benefit you can qualify for under the Montgomery GI Bill is $15,575. To earn a larger benefit, like the $40,000 the military is so fond of advertising, you must qualify for the Army/Navy College Fund. To do this you must score in the top half of the military entry tests and be willing to enter a designated job specialty. These designated Military Occupational Specialties are the most unpopular in the military. The military has a hard time filling them because they have no skills that are transferable to the civilian job market. More Obstacles Even after you've been honorably discharged, you're still a long way from getting that money. Even though you've earned your tuition benefit you probably won't get it all. The military has still more requirements for you to fulfill before you get all of your money. Of course, you must be attending an accredited school. The military's payment plan is based on a four year college schedule: they'll pay you equal portions of your money over 36 months (the equivalent of four academic years of nine months each). This schedule is not flexible! If you, like 56% of veterans using the Montgomery GI Bill, attend a two year school or vocational school you can not receive larger payments over a shorter period of time. That means a two year college graduate will receive only half of the money they have earned! Even though you earned that money, the Montgomery GI Bill doesn't let you decide how to use it in the way that's best for you. But your argument will fall on deaf ears. The military advertises large amounts of education money but the program is designed so the money is hard to get and harder to use. The inflexibility of the Montgomery GI Bill shows that the military wants to use it to recruit you, not to send you to college. It Isn't Enough Even if you qualify for and receive the full $40,000, it isn't worth as much as you might think. While World War II GI Bill participants were able to attend 90% of all schools (public, private, two-year and four-year) with their tuition grant, $40,000 will cover just over one year at some private schools today. Even state universities cost an average of about $9,000 per year. Your benefits probably won't increase while you're in the military (benefits have been raised twice since the program was begun in 1985). But the cost of education will continue to rise at a rate of 5-10% per year. By the time you finish your tour, your education benefit will be worth a quarter less than when you signed up. If you don't go to school right after the military, which many people don't, your benefit will become worth less and less. You need to ask yourself in a serious and realistic way, do you intend to go to college? If yes, you need to have a plan. That plan may include joining the military, but you can see that will work for only a few people. If your plans for going to college seem to be more dream than reality, you need to take a long look at what is really possible. If you're hoping that the military can make an unplanned dream come true, it's not going to happen. Don't forget, you're risking your own money in the Montgomery GI Bill as well. Education in the Military? Recruiters also like to talk about educational opportunities while you're in the military. According to recruiters, not only will you learn skill in your job specialty but you also have the chance to take college courses on-base or close by. In theory, this may be true. But when the military commissioned a study to see what soldiers thought of military recruiting, an overwhelming number responded that they thought military advertisements' promises of education were "lies...false" or "not the truth to me." Rather than working with the helicopters you see in slick advertisements, they found themselves "buffin' floors and pickin' up cigarette butts." Your decision about whether to join the military, with or without the Montgomery GI Bill, is not an easy one. Unfortunately, it's not as simple as weighing the pros and cons of this or that benefit. Other jobs may be hard to come by, but they don't demand what the military demands. You give up your freedom when you join the military, entering a different world with different laws, where others can control your life 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The Military Mission Above all else, the military is an institution with one overriding purpose: to prepare for and fight wars. You literally sign your life over to the military. For some who joined the military before the Gulf War, they didn't fully realize this until they were faced with an actual war in Saudi Arabia against Iraq. Don't make the same mistake they made. If you're going to join the military be prepared to fight a war, even a war you may not agree with. It could be a war we lose, like Vietnam. Or, it could be a war we win, like in Kuwait. Either way, people are killed and you might be the one who kills them. As much as the war in Iraq has been celebrated, you can find US veterans who can't forget some of the awful things they saw there. Is that the kind of risk you want to take to finance your college education? Be A Smart Consumer The Montgomery GI Bill was not created to send you, or anyone else, to school. It was designed to recruit soldiers. It may be all the same to you, as long as you end up with money for college. But why the program was created affects its design and how well it is funded. The Montgomery GI Bill is designed to attract you with a large sounding amount of money with lots of strings attached. The maximum benefit of $40,000 quickly dwindles to $14,375 or $6588 for an alarming number of recruits. Many don't find that out until after they've joined! By then it's much too late... Nobody else can make decisions about what is best for you, not the recruiter and not us. But your decisions should be based on more than slick ads and a recruiter's sales pitch. The military promises but often it does not deliver. The above information is excerpted, with updated figures, from a 1991 thesis on the Montgomery GI Bill (available in adobe acrobat format) written by Alex Doty.

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