Veterans Start Over as Colleges Ignore Experience
Twelve years of military service left Donald Spradling highly trained in satellite imagery, nuclear engineering and foreign intelligence analysis. None of that made a difference to the University of Missouri.
When the fall semester begins next week, the 33-year-old father of five will be taking largely introductory courses with the rest of the school's freshmen.Nearly half a million veterans are expected on college campuses this year as part of the new GI Bill. The surge is leading to a call for schools to re-examine their policies of declining to grant college credit for military training and service, along with offering them veteran scholarships.
An estimated one in five colleges and universities do not offer military scholarships or give academic credit for military education, according to a recent survey of 723 schools by the American Council on Education that is believed to be the first systematic measure. Even more of the schools, 36 percent, said they don't award credit for military occupational training.
For Spradling and others, that can mean spending more on tuition, stretching financial aid or GI Bill scholarships and delaying their entry into the work force.
In most cases, it's simply an academic decision that they're not going to award any credit for learning acquired outside a traditional classroom.
It may be very practical skills acquisition, but that may not be what university education sets out to do. Universities are looking to build on a framework, a foundation of knowledge.
At Boston College, a private school, the standard has always been to accept credit only for institutions of higher education.
Many college-bound veterans said military recruiters often offer an unrealistic portrayal of what awaits in academia, suggesting their military coursework and training will count for college credit.
Some advocates also fault a campus climate where military training is poorly understood. They say many schools underestimate the quality of their education, and unlike community college credit or Advanced Placement classes, it's not easy to measure.
Because of their lack of knowledge of the military, they don't equate it as the same as being in the classroom. But, some colleges are promoting their credits for military work as a way to recruit veterans.
School's are starting to establish college scholarships for veterans and have established two degree programs geared specifically for service members: an emergency medical care degree for Special Forces medics and an emergency and disaster management degree for civil affairs personnel. Both accept military training and transfer military training for credit for other degrees.
