GI Bill's buying power shrinks

[deadparrot]

Source: Associated Press

FAIRFAX, Va. - Marc Edgerly and his father, Carl, both joined the Army as young men, served during wartime and eventually decided that college, not a full-time military career, was what they wanted. But the cost they shouldered for that education is dramatically different.

The GI Bill covered all of Carl Edgerly's college expenses in the mid-1970s. His son, however, expects that even with the maximum $1,075 in monthly GI Bill benefits, he will be saddled with $50,000 in student loans when he graduates from George Mason University.

"The total amount of the GI Bill comes nowhere close to what I actually need for college," said Marc Edgerly, 26, who is in his second year at the suburban Washington school. "After five years of college, it is not going to work."

As the Edgerlys prove, it's not your father's GI Bill anymore.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/gi_bill

[Captain Hilts]

1. In the mid-1980s, a friend of mine - former Top Gun instructor - saw his cut by $200 a month. nt

[bluestateguy]

2. We need to go back to the GI Bill of 1944 when it paid for everything

Tuition, Room and Board, books, and a stipend.

[Jackpine Radical]

3. When I went back to school on the GI Bill in 1969, we got

$130 per month. The 1946 monthly rate was $125. It was virtually a joke for us.

[Submariner]

4. When I went back to school in 1970, the GI Bill

monthly rate was $261/month. I was newly married, so I forget if I got extra for having a spouse, but I think not.

The state (Massachusetts) also gave me a one-time lump sum of $300, and waived ALL my tuition and book expenses for 4 years. I could not have afforded college if it wasn't for the GI Bill.

If you recall, we even got free VA Health Care for life if needed, but Chimpy and that yellow-bellied draft-dodging coward 5 deferment Cheney took all the VA care away to pay for their Iraq fiasco.

[erpowers]

5. Other Programs

Can any of these soldiers use other military programs to pay for their college? I know there are some other programs that will pay for all of a students tutition and then give them a stipend. Can any of these soldiers apply for ROTC scholarships or other programs?

[Lex1775]

6. My advice...

Pick a different school. I use the GI Bill right now and have never had any problems paying for books,classes, etc. People tend to forget that the GI Bill is not meant to live on, it is meant to pay for school, in the strictest sense. It is also designed to only get you a Bachelors degree.

One of the best pieces of advice I got before leaving the service was from a veteran who told us to get our undergrad stuff out of the way at a community college and then transfer to a 4 year university. Not only was it WAY cheaper but the instruction was WAY better.

I'd say the guy in this article was living with a false belief in the GI Bill and now the real world has bit him in the ass.

[ingac70]

7. If he can't afford school getting $1,075 a month, he needs to pick another school!

WTF?

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

8. Uh... please explain? -nt

[ingac70]

9. He needs to go to a state school and get a job....

What else is there to explain? I know people who get the GI Bill that aren't spending the amount of an average house on their education.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

10. No, wait, let me guess.

In addition to that, the minimum wage is high enough, unions are bad, and there is such a thing as "welfare queens." Right?

[La Lioness Priyanka]

13. support the troops cannot be expressed with a yellow ribbon.

[Massacure]

15. I'm in college and I spend about $9,000 a year on tuition, books, gas, and insurance.

I live with my parents, but without gas and insurance I believe it would be possible to get a dorm and still be able to attend school on the $12,000 a year the GI bill offers. I couldn't live in a dorm off my part time job though, having both a car and dorm would be too much.

[rickrok66]

11. You need a strategery for the GI Bill

The GI Bill is a finite pot of money that is good for like 10 years. It will pay a BA / BS degree at most state and online schools. You will not be able to afford the top of the line schools like Harvard, Stanford, etc.

Service members should try to obtain as many credits as they can before they get out. I know it is impossible to do if you are being shot at in Iraq. However, they can convert some training to credits through places like Excelsior and Thomas Edison State College. While on Active Duty, service members can use tuition assistance which pays 75% of tuition up to a fixed amount each year. In the end that best option for a soldier to get as many he or she can while in the service, then enroll in a good state school or one of the online schools that cater to the military.

Yes, there is a green to gold program for soldiers who want to become officers, but many who leave the service don't want an ROTC scholarship which will incur another service obligation.

I am speaking from experience. I had a 2 year ROTC scholarship and used tuition assistance to pay for part of my graduate degree.

[Muddy Waters Guitar]

12. The GI Bill has become a lot like the AMT-- purposely unupdated to screw its "beneficiaries" more

The GI Bill is a relic with a financial "reward" that's never been adjusted for inflation or changes in cost-of-living. A supposedly nice gesture that's purposely been made into an anachronism to deprive its supposed beneficiaries of their fair benefits. Similar to the AMT-- designed for a prior period, and purposely left unupdated so that it sweeps in and screws over more and more middle-class people. Doesn't surprise me much.

[Hidden Stillness]

14. All Democrats Should Be Fighting for Things Like THIS

This is the same thing Republicans are doing to every other program: they can't kill them because they are so popular and there is so much support for them, so they do not fund them, and/or place their cronies in charge of the Department, to sabotage everything. Pell Grants also, used to pay for about 80% of college costs, so poor people could just study, and not worry; now they pay for something like 20-25%, (forgot exact amount, but it helps little if anything); food stamps used to cover food bills for the poorest people, now almost no one gets over about $30 a month; etc. Notice, you have two plants on this one thread alone--this is the kind of thing they really hate and want to kill. They do not go to an effort to attack Dennis Kucinich or some such; they attack and want to completely destroy, and poison the memory of, Roosevelt's New Deal, and when Democrats really helped the people, and corporations were not even at the table.

This goes right to the heart of what Government is for.

[krkaufman]

16. How much of this relates to the GI Bill versus the escalating costs ...

... of a college education? Both need to be addressed.