School support p1 - College Campus Life for Veterans - Military Times EDGE

It’s a good time to be a student veteran. Hundreds of thousands of former service members are heading to school on the Post-9/11 GI Bill, and schools are responding by hiring more staff and beefing up programs to help them succeed in the classroom. New veterans coordinators who work primarily or exclusively with vets are printing up business cards. Offices, lounges and even housing for vets are being carved out of valuable campus real estate. Schools are training professors on post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury.

At the same time external support is building, veterans are finding more camaraderie and support from their own on campus. They’re organizing into social groups and advisory committees, taking jobs in their school’s resource centers and mentoring fellow veterans.

All this activity made it interesting, but difficult, to put together our first “Best for Vets: Colleges” feature. With so many kinds of schools — big research universities, community colleges, small liberal arts universities, distance-learning institutions — doing so many things to attract and serve this population, how do you decide what’s “best for veterans”?

Best for Vets: Colleges ranking

Military Times EDGE tried to help you answer that question by inviting more than 4,000 accredited institutions of higher learning to tell us about their veterans programs, policies and resources, and evaluating their responses in four categories:

• Financial assistance: Scholarships, discounts and waivers specifically for veterans, including the Yellow Ribbon program and relaxed residency restrictions for in-state tuition. Also: measures taken to protect veterans in the case of late-arriving benefits; most schools hold students harmless for late GI Bill payments, but some score extra points for advancing bookstore credit or even emergency housing funds.

• Academic flexibility: Participation in the Servicemembers’ Opportunity Colleges consortium and Degree Network Systems and acceptance of military learning and subject tests, like the College Level Examination Program, for academic credit. Also: school policies on military-related withdrawals — for example, do students have to reapply or repay any fees after returning from a deployment?

• Campus culture: General receptivity to veterans, including percentage of vets in the student body and faculty. Also considered: ROTC programs, Veterans Day observance, local student veteran organizations and training for faculty and staff in veterans issues.

• Support services: The number and kind of staff designated to work with veterans, including the number of students receiving work-study allowances from the Veterans Affairs Department. Also: efforts to reach out to veterans, acclimate them to campus and create a veterans’ community, including mentorship programs, special orientation sessions, service projects and academic support.

Of course, certain kinds of schools have advantages in certain criteria — for example, online schools and community colleges tend to be more flexible in awarding credit, while larger institutions have more funds (and more need) to award scholarships.

What are your criteria?

Each veteran will have a different perspective on the most important factors in a good college experience. In the end, you probably don’t care what college is “best for vets” — you want to know what college is best for you. Many factors beyond those we’ve measured will count in your calculation: convenience, location, degree choice, prestige — all factors apart from a school’s veterans services.

We invite you to let us know what other factors you think we should consider in the future at EDGE@militarytimes.com.

Best for Vets: Colleges ranking