In the main room of a onetime fraternity house at the edge of San Diego State University, a small group of students labors quietly, laser-focused, over textbooks and laptops.
This is the Veterans House, its door propped open by a spent artillery shell. It’s where some of the more than 800 military veterans enrolled here study between classes as a flat screen TV broadcasts SportsCenter with the volume muted, or help each other out with particularly challenging assignments.
At the heart of the campus is yet another lounge for student veterans. Called the Bunker and draped with camouflage and decorated with service symbols and insignia and vintage recruiting posters, it’s inside the Veterans Center, a warren of offices filled with advisors and counselors — most military veterans themselves — who cut through paperwork and other potentially career-ending distractions.
This level of support helps more than three-quarters of the veterans at San Diego State to graduate within four years, the university reports, nearly double the national average. That’s in spite of extra challenges confronting student veterans, who are usually older than traditional-aged students and more likely to be juggling college with families, jobs and service-related disabilities, and who often face significantly more red tape.
Success rates like San Diego State’s are more of an exception than the rule, however.
Many colleges and universities that eagerly recruit military veterans and the $10.2 billion a year in GI Bill benefits that come with them offer nowhere near as much support, and their student veterans rarely get degrees, according to data obtained from the Departments of Defense, Education and Veterans Affairs.
Read more at The Hechinger Report: http://hechingerreport.org/colleges-recruit-veterans-gi-bill-money-none-graduate/