Aiming high p1 - Military - Education Strategies and Tips - Military Times EDGE

When Aerographer’s Mate 1st Class Raymond Glass gets home from work, he doesn’t turn on the TV and reach for a beer. Most nights, the 14-year Navy veteran turns on his laptop and reaches for his books.

Thousands of service members do the same — but not many do it for 13 years.

Glass has knocked off associate, bachelor’s and master’s degrees since 2000, and now he’s aiming for the big one: If all goes according to plan, he’ll graduate from the University of Phoenix with a doctorate in educational leadership in 2013. That will put him in one of the most exclusive clubs in the military.

A very small percentage of active-duty service members have a doctorate, the services report. Among officers, 1.5 percent of soldiers, 4.4 percent of sailors, 0.3 percent of Marines and 1.4 percent of airmen boast a doctoral degree. The numbers for enlisted troops, who generally enter with less schooling and have fewer opportunities to attend graduate school on duty, are even smaller: about 230 soldiers, 30 sailors, 90 Marines and 25 airmen.

Major commitment

The numbers are low largely because of the time commitment, according to Susan McIntosh, educational services officer at Lifelong Learning Center at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Va. A bachelor’s degree requires 120 credits, which can take up to eight years to fit in around active-duty obligations. Students need 36 to 45 more credits to earn a master’s degree, and then 60 more credits for a doctorate, as well as the required dissertation.

“By the time you are finishing, you are probably getting pretty close to retirement age,” she said.

Then there’s the money. Glass is making full use of military Tuition Assistance, which pays $250 per credit hour, up to $4,500. He’s also using the Top-Up program of the Montgomery GI Bill, which pays the balance for more expensive classes out of his GI Bill benefits. That leaves him with $3,500 in out-of-pocket tuition each year. In the last year of his degree, all these benefits will be tapped out and he’ll pay about $10,000 out of pocket.

In general, credit hours toward a doctorate are pricier than undergraduate tuition because these degrees are more likely to come from private schools, McIntosh said.

But you have an important advantage if you take these graduate classes on active duty. For now, thanks to a loophole in the legislation, active-duty service members can receive full tuition under the Post-9/11 GI Bill: State caps do not apply.

That’s a good reason to tap into the Post-9/11 GI Bill if TA is coming up significantly short, McIntosh said — assuming, of course, that you are not planning to transfer the benefits to a spouse or child. (The downside to using Chapter 33 while serving is that you don’t get the book allowance or living stipend.)

Education services officers can help you figure out how to stretch your benefits over multiple, and increasingly expensive, degrees, McIntosh said. “We help them set financial goals as well as education goals.”

Return on investment

So what are the rewards?

They may not be professional, at least not while in uniform.

“The chief’s board will look for college, but they not going to look any further than an associate [degree] or a bachelor’s,” Glass said. If anything, he worries his academic achievement could be a liability. “I try to keep it to myself. It’s something that people might see as making me overqualified.”

Most doctoral programs are designed to produce teachers and researchers, not machinists and gunners. So enlisted service members who seek out such degrees tend to be thinking toward life out of uniform, McIntosh said. “It makes them a better-educated person, but it doesn’t really help their military career.”

“They want to get out of the service and still be in a high-level leadership role,” she said. “You do it if you have specific career goals.”

In the near term, satisfaction typically comes not from career enhancement, but from a sense of personal achievement. It is a high hill to climb, and if you can plant your flag at the top, then you’ve really done something.

However, the long-term rewards once you’re out of the military are significant: In 2009, the median weekly earnings of those with a doctoral degree was 49 percent higher than those with a bachelor’s degree and 22 percent higher than those with a master’s degree, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Current Population Survey.

When Glass wraps it up, he’ll have a few more years of Navy service to reach the 20-year mark. Then he’d like to go into teaching and eventually become a principal or superintendent, or work as a curriculum designer. Whatever he does, he won’t stop studying.

“Once I am done with the doctorate, I still don’t know if I will be done learning. I enjoy opening my books and finding something new every day.”

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What to look for

Thinking of a Ph.D? Some things toconsider:

• Evaluate the program. Ask big questions. How are dissertation topics determined? What are the faculty research interests? Talk with students about their experiences in the program. Look at recent graduate student dissertations.

Your criteria should be different for a doctorate than a bachelor’s degree, said Susan McIntosh, educational services officer at the Lifelong Learning Center at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Va.

A doctorate requires close collaboration between student and adviser; even more than an undergraduate student, a doctoral candidate will need a school and professors that are sympathetic to the demands and uncertainties of military timetables.

• Go to ground level. When you’ve narrowed your field of schools, nothing beats an on-campus visit. Get a sense for the level of camaraderie.

• Prepare for change. Talk to others who have pursued Ph.Ds. What did the work entail? What did they have to give up? What does the lifestyle demand, especially when you’re juggling coursework against active-duty responsibilities?

Source: American College Personnel Association