WASHINGTON – Military service members are cashing in on previous training and experience to earn credits toward college degrees.
After serving in the Armed Forces, veterans often have difficulty balancing higher education with the challenges of raising a family and trying to advance their careers, said Navy veteran Jason Wolfe. The obstacles cause many veterans to lag behind, sometimes taking 10 years to complete a bachelor’s degree.
Since 1974 the Council for Adult and Experimental Learning (CAEL), a nonprofit based in Chicago, has helped adults to obtain the education and training necessary for pursuing desired career goals. CAEL recently announced a new program called LearningCounts.org, which will assist adults in earning course credit for prior military service, as well as for civilian training, work experiences and volunteer efforts.
The portfolio evaluation tool available on LearningCounts.org helps determine the amount of previous learning one can put toward earning a degree. More than 1,500 colleges and universities across the country offer credit for prior learning, with the list growing every year.
“The earlier you start the process of tapping into resources of prior learning, the better,” said Wolfe, whose prior experience allowed him to save time and money. With the help of CAEL, Wolfe claimed a total of 24 of the allowed 30 credits, saving him an entire year.
Wolfe, 34, expects to graduate from Indiana Institute of Technology this year with a bachelor’s degree in industrial manufacturing engineering.
Although the Department of Veterans Affairs has spent $30 billion on education benefits since 2009, the investment does not always pay off, said Amy Sherman, associate vice president for policy and strategic alliances at CAEL. Many veterans don’t know how to approach higher education and wind up changing majors or schools. That can prevent them from completing their degree work in the required 36 months that the Post-9/11 GI Bill allots for aid, she said.
“If they make poor or uninformed decisions—the clock is ticking to use these benefits. Thus they need clear advice upfront because the public is investing in these benefits,” Sherman said.
In a 2010 study conducted by CAEL, students with credits for prior learning had higher graduation rates and spent less time working toward a degree than other adult students.
Earning credit from prior learning experience is essential for those members of the military who — unlike the traditional college student — are in different stages of their lives, said Michael Dakduk, executive director of Student Veterans of America. Nearly half of student veterans have a family, about half hold part-time jobs while attending school, and 85 percent are 24 or older, according to Student Veterans of America data.
“Their focus is not on a traditional college experience but on their careers,” Dakduk said. “Their ultimate goal is to be employed, as quickly as possible.”
On average prior learning assessment students save between three and 10 months in earning their bachelor’s degree.
Dakduk, who received 15 credits at University of Nevada Las Vegas toward his bachelor’s degree in public policy and communications, was able to skip an entire semester. He received credit for electives, including as a course on culture, something he said his deployment to Iraq taught him.
“What would you learn from a PowerPoint, compared to being overseas in the dirt of that country—now that is cultural experience,” he said, explaining the education deployment provides for these soldiers.
But the decision falls on the shoulders of colleges and universities to offer student veterans the credits that will expedite their schooling, he said.
In a roundtable discussion among the Defense Department, the Veterans Affairs Department and the veteran community at the White House in April, Michelle Obama expressed a concern that military service was not paying off in the civilian world.
Too often, the first lady said, veterans “discover that the credits that they’ve earned in military courses don’t actually transfer when they enroll in college, so they’re turned away from jobs that they’re more than qualified to do.”
These veterans have a lot to bring to the table both in the classroom and in the job force, CAEL’s Sherman said.
“We need to prepare vets for the job market and build on what they’ve already learned,” she said. “It is not just a moral obligation, but it makes sense for us financially as well.”