The Department of Defense announced in November 2001 that tuition assistance for active-duty members seeking off-duty education would rise and that reimbursement rates would be made uniform across all branches of service. The uniformity is important, said defense officials, because members of different services work side by side in a joint environment. Morale could suffer if each service offered different levels of education benefits.
In October 2002, higher tuition assistance rates finally arrived, but the uniformity that was sought fell victim to differences in budget priorities among the services.
The Coast Guard, an agency of the Department of Transportation, said it could not afford to adopt the new rates that Congress first authorized more than a year ago. Therefore, for fiscal year 2003, tuition assistance will remain unchanged, covering 75% of costs up to an annual cap per student of $3,500.
The Marine Corps, by contrast, boosted tuition assistance to the new level on I October, paying 100% of off-duty education costs, up to $250 per credit hour, and a maximum of $4,500 per student annually. The Army and Air Force adopted the same rate and ceilings.
To accommodate the change, the Marine Corps raised its tuition assistance budget to $28 million for 2003, a 50% jump from the previous year. The Corps said 20,000 Marines used tuition assistance for 59,000 courses in 2002. With 100% coverage, officials expect a 60% rise in participation. The new budget is set to cover roughly 95,000 courses.
The Navy announced that it too will cover 100% of tuition costs, an increase from the 75% covered last year, but said it could not afford to raise its tuition assistance budget beyond last year's $44 million. As a result, student sailors will be limited to 12 semester hours (or about four courses) for the year. That means the annual cap on Navy tuition assistance actually has been lowered to $3,000 from $3,500 in 2002.
With the same tuition assistance budget as last year, said Joy White, spokeswoman for the Naval Education and Training Command in Pensacola, the Navy's goal in lowering the annual maximum is to allow at least the same number of students, perhaps even a few thousand more, to take advantage of the program. She said only 5% of sailor students used the full $3,500 in benefits last year.
"The Navy took a hard look at the amount of money in the pot and we literally crunched numbers and crunched numbers and put together several different plans," White said. Options were discussed not only among senior officers but also with fleet master chiefs and education experts. Among the various choices, the limit on semester hours was thought to be the best "to reach as many sailors as possible with limited resources. That's the key. We've got a small pot of money [$44.6 million] with an expanded group of people wanting to use it," White said.
Charles Abell, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Force Management Policy, said he was satisfied with the Navy's solution, despite his guidance last November that the services come up with a uniform benefit. That guidance, described as "Department-wide policy," directed not only 100% tuition coverage but also that "each service member participating in off-duty, voluntary education shall have available $4,500, in the aggregate, for each fiscal year."
The Navy's final solution is better than what it first proposed, which was to cap the entire tuition assistance program at last year's level, said a defense official. Abell reportedly rejected that idea.
"The Navy has stepped up and done 100% reimbursement, and I'm proud of them for doing it," Abell said. As every service knows, he added, "it's not an unlimited pot of money."
Reaction from the fleet has been "mixed," White said. "Initially it was, 'What? We're not following what the other services are doing?' But when people take a closer look they [understand] we've got a third of our fleet deployed off Afghanistan, the Philippines and other places, fighting the war on terror and other operations. Those sailors are going to want to take college courses when they return. We're trying to touch as many sailors' lives as possible." She noted that students who hit the $3,000 maximum and are eligible for the Montgomery GI Bill can use that program's "Top-Up" benefit for costs not covered.
More details on all the Navy's off-duty education programs can be found at www.navycollege.navy.mil/.