At the beginning of the spring semester in January at Colorado University in Colorado Springs, a dozen military veterans waited for their benefit checks for GI Bill students. They waited and waited a little more, until the money finally arrived in April.
By then, three were gone.
In general, veterans take weeks to receive the benefits of Gi Bill from the veteran administration, funds used for registration, textbooks and housing. But under the Trump administration, it has taken at least three more times, said Jeff Deickman, deputy director of Veteran and Military Affairs on that campus.
Deickman's counterparts in other universities say that the paperwork will often have errors, causing more delays, and some veteran students are abandoning.
“I can spend, on bad days, three hours by phone with the VA,” said Deickman, a 20 -year -old army veteran and a doctoral student. “You will only answer questions about one student at the same time, so I have to hang and start again.”
Almost 600,000 veterans received a total of approximately $ 10 billion in Gi Bill benefits Last year for education, according to VA.
But the efforts of the Trump administration to reduce the size of the VA in approximately 30,000 positions and dismantle the Department of Education, which manages some student help for veterans, have caused delays in funds and are hindering the ability of students to understand and obtain answers about their educational benefits, defense groups say.
“Part of the challenge of wrapping our weapons is the opacity of the whole matter,” said Barkk Nassirian, vice president of higher education policy in the success of veterans' education. “We are feeling the impact.”
Assembly of frustration
“The whole process” has become a disaster, said a 33 -year -old marine veterinarian in Colorado, who asked not to reveal his name for fear of reprisals from federal authorities. “It is making us very anxious.”
Social networks expose that anxiety and frustration. In publications, veterans complain about Stagnant benefits and errors.
“I would only want to be able to talk to someone who could help, but all representatives seem to be able to help and simply tell me to apply again, what I have 4x, just because of another denial,” one wrote in Reddit, about the attempts to have a forgiven student loan.
“Complete nightmare,” wrote another Reddit poster about the same process. “Delays, errors and employees who know nothing. No one knows anything at this time.”
The Federal Law guarantees that the student loans of the disabled veterinarians will be forgiven. But some veterans with permanent disabilities have reported that their loan download requests were denied. One said the Department of Education continued with a letter that said it was a mistake, but it took months to correct the error.
The Department of Education did not respond to comments requests. A VA spokesman, Gary Kunich, refused to answer even general questions about delays in the benefits unless the Hechinger report provided the names of veterans and universities that reported problems.
Nearly 17,000 VA employees had gone The agency for June, according to a VA press release, and is expected that around 12,000 more will leave at the end of September.
Veterinarians fight for benefits
VAZA interruptions threaten “Access to the educational benefits of veteransAs even more veterans and service members may be resorting to higher education and professional training, ”wrote the American Education Council, or ACE, the largest association and universities association in the country, in June.
That is in addition to existing frustrations. Veterans already fight to obtain the educational benefits they have won.
“The eligibility rules can be confusing,” Ace wrote, and are plagued with “bureaucracy that takes a long time.” As a result, “many students and the institutions that serve them depend on VA personnel to interpret the rules, solve disputes and ensure that the benefits are processed in time. With less personnel, that support system runs the risk of breaking.”
Veterans students in America, one of the largest defense organizations, did not respond to repeated interview requests. Ten schools and universities with the greatest veteran inscriptions of the nation, including the state of San Diego, the state of Georgia, the state of Angelo, the state of Arizona and Syracuse, also did not answer or refused to answer questions.
Veterans and defenders are also concerned that the cuts of the Department of Education can erode the supervision of universities mainly for profit that receive benefits from the GI bill. Veterans have twice as probabilities to attend these universities than other students, according to the Institute of National Post -Secondy Policy.
The risk is particularly high for low -income veterans and those of various origins, said Lindsay Church, executive director of Minority Veterans of America. It is less likely that these veteran students come from homes with university education, Church said, making them more vulnerable to fraud.
Delays and errors
But the most immediate problems are delays in payments and paperwork errors, they said veteran students and their advisors.
In the military city of San Diego, where thousands of previous and current service members go to university, the veteran students of Miramar College waited this year to listen to the VA work study contracts, which had previously been approved in a matter of days.
The contracts allow students to receive the payment of works related to veterans while attending school, said Laclaune Duhart, director of Veterans and Military Education Affairs of the School.
Others spent weeks without textbooks due to retarded VA payments, Duhart said.
“Many students cannot afford to lose those benefits,” he said, describing the anger that many veteran students expressed during the long waiting times of this year. Some leave.
“Many times it is that emotional reaction that makes these students not return to an institution,” he said.
Several stories related to veterans without titles choose to look for work instead of continuing their education due to frustration with the VA, although studies show that university graduates can drastically increase future profits.
Those who face the additional stress of waiting for their benefits, or not being able to answer their questions.
“We always tell them that they are prepared for delays,” said Phillip Morris, associate professor of educational research and leadership at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, who studies veterans students. “But if you cannot pay your rent because its benefits do not flow from the way you expect, that is to increase the anxiety and stress that translates into the classroom.”
Krupnick wrote This story For him The Hechinger reportA non -profit independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education.
