CHICAGO – Matthew Saldana proved himself in a world where stress, danger and life-and-death decisions were routine. He served one tour in Iraq and a second in Afghanistan. But the Army veteran is having a harder time back home, accomplishing something that should be much easier — finding a job. On this spring day, Saldana is roaming the aisles of a noisy ballroom in the Hilton Chicago at a Hiring Our Heroes job fair. Dressed smartly in red tie and black suit, he clutches a leather folder containing his three-page resume, joining hundreds of other vets looking for opportunity and a paycheck. To read entire article please click here.
On April 27, the White House announced measures that will help curb the practices of some abusive schools, which target Veterans for their education benefits. Learn more at VAntage Point.
President Obama will sign an executive order Friday aimed at rooting out fraud and abuse of federal programs aimed at helping members of the military, veterans and their families go to college.
Obama will travel to Fort Stewart in Hinesville, Ga., to take steps to “ensure that service members and veterans and their families have the critical information they need to make informed decisions that protect them from aggressive and deceptive targeting by education institutions,” a senior administration official said Thursday on a conference call with reporters. He’ll be joined by first lady Michelle Obama, who has made military families a priority with her Joining Forces initiative. To read entire article please click here.
The Veterans Opportunity to Work (VOW) website is now available, providing a wealth of information on the VOW to Hire Heroes Act. It includes details about the Veterans Retraining Assistance Program (VRAP), tax credits for employers, vocational rehabilitation services, transition assistance programs, and Department of Labor (DOL) resources.
VA and DOL are dedicated to outreach efforts to ensure information about the Veteran Retraining Assistance Program (VRAP) reaches qualified Veterans and provides information on eligibility and how to apply.
Qualified Veterans will be able to apply for VRAP directly from the site beginning May 15, 2012.
The Department of Veterans Affairs’ budget is exempt from the threat of automatic cuts to federal spending scheduled to be made next year, the White House said Monday afternoon.
The statement was made in a letter Monday from the Office of Management and Budget in response to a request in March from the Government Accountability Office seeking the White House view.
The letter, from OMB deputy general counsel Steven D. Aitken, says that “all programs administered by the VA, including Veterans’ Medical Care, are exempt from sequestration.” Veterans groups had feared that medical care or other programs for veterans could be cut because last year’s failure to reach a deal on reducing the federal deficit is supposed to trigger automatic cuts under a sequestration mechanism. To read entire article please click here.
WASHINGTON — The Veterans Affairs Department is planning to resume a policy of cutting into the tuition payments from the Post-9/11 GI Bill for veterans with outstanding debts, drawing protests from higher education associations who say that the policy will force colleges to become debt collectors themselves.
Veterans who owe debt to the department — including advance payments under the Post-9/11 GI Bill that require repayment, as well as debt incurred from other Veterans Affairs benefit programs for housing and medical expenses — can have future aid withheld to repay the money they owe. To read entire article, please click here.
Tuition Assistance MOU
WASHINGTON — The Department of Defense appears to have softened a new memorandum of understanding for colleges participating in tuition assistance programs for active duty military service members, eliminating provisions that some campus officials said went too far in trying to influence college policies on academic issues — and adding new ones that seem aimed at for-profit institutions.
The memorandum, first proposed in March 2011, was intended to tighten quality control over programs receiving money from the more than 300,000 active-duty troops taking courses with tuition assistance dollars. Instead, it drew protests from some colleges, including selective research institutions, by requiring colleges hoping to enroll students on tuition assistance to adhere as much as possible to the student bill of rights from the Servicemembers Opportunity Colleges, a voluntary association.
Colleges in the association, which includes many four-year public colleges (including some state flagship universities) as well as some community colleges and for-profit institutions, agree to generous transfer of credit policies and lenient residency requirements. Students must be required to spend no more than one year in residence for a four-year degree, and colleges that sign the bill of rights agree to give academic credit for some military training. To read entire article please click here.
DOD MOU Extended to Summer 2012
The Department of Defense is internally coordinating an amended MOU within the Pentagon. Once completed, schools will have ample time to review the MOU prior to their signing and the policy going into effect. DoD anticipates the policy will go into effect during the summer of 2012. As such, no school will be rendered ineligible for TA after March 30, 2012 if they have not signed the MOU until the policy’s new implementation date. Please note that only the implementation date has changed, not the requirement to sign the MOU in order to be eligible to receive TA funding from the Services within the Department of Defense.
2012-2013 Yellow Ribbon Agreements
The revised Yellow Ribbon Agreement with updated instructions, letter from the Director of Education Service, and checklist are posted on the GI Bill website at: http://gibill.va.gov/school-
A former U.S. Marine has donated $10 million to pay for scholarships for military veterans attending USC’s Marshall School of Business and Viterbi School of Engineering, university officials announced Tuesday.
The donation by William J. Schoen and his wife, Sharon, will expand a family endowment that has provided $1.2 million in financial aid to 173 veterans to continue their eduction at USC. In all, they have contributed $16 million to the Schoen Family Scholarship Program for Veterans Endowment since it was established in 1986.
Schoen, who served in Korea from 1953 to 1956, said he was the beneficiary of a scholarship at USC that helped him achieve an MBA and launched him on a successful business career. “I felt I had an outstanding education, and I wanted other veterans coming back from active duty to have the same opportunity that I had,” said Schoen, who is a USC trustee and board chairman at Health Management Associates, a Florida-based hospital corporation. To read entire article please click here.