As the spring semester got under way in January at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, a dozen military veterans waited for their GI Bill student benefit checks to show up.
Then they waited, and waited some more, until the money finally arrived — in April.
By that time, three had left.
Getting GI Bill benefits from the Veterans Administration, which student veterans use to pay for their tuition, textbooks and housing, already took weeks. Since federal government staffing cuts since President Donald Trump took office, it’s been taking at least three times longer, said Jeff Deickman, assistant director for veteran and military affairs at the student veteran center on that campus.
Deickman’s counterparts at other colleges say the VA’s paperwork often has errors, causing further delays. They say some student veterans are dropping out.
“I can spend, on bad days, three hours on the phone with the VA,” said Deickman, himself a 20-year Army veteran and a doctoral student. “They’ll only answer questions about one student at a time, so I have to hang up and start over again.”
Nearly 600,000 veterans received a total of about $10 billion worth of GI Bill benefits last year, according to the VA.
The start of the new administration brought big personnel cuts to both the VA and the U.S. Department of Education, which manages some student aid for veterans. Now, advocacy groups and universities and colleges that enroll large numbers of veterans are bracing for the planned layoffs and departures of nearly 30,000 VA employees and additional cuts at the Department of Education.
Many are also concerned about the potential for reduced scrutiny of the for-profit college sector, which critics contend has taken advantage of veterans’ tuition payments without providing the promised educational benefits.
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Veterans who are just starting to feel the effects of federal cuts, and organizations that support them, worry things will only get worse, said Barmak Nassirian, vice president for higher education policy at the advocacy group Veterans Education Success. The nonprofit has been getting calls from students anxious about confusing information they’re receiving from federal agencies, he said, and it’s been hard to get answers from the government.
“Part of the challenge of wrapping our arms around this is the opaqueness of the whole thing. We’re sort of feeling our way around the impact,” Nassirian said.
“The whole process” has become a mess, said one 33-year-old Navy vet in Colorado, who used a more colorful term common in the military and asked that his name not be disclosed for fear of reprisal. “It’s making a lot of us anxious.”
Social media lays bare that anxiety — and frustration. In posts, veterans complain about stalled benefits and mistakes.
“I just wish I could speak to someone who could help but all of the reps seem to be unable to assist and simply tell me to reapply, which I have 4x, just for another denial,” wrote one on Reddit, about attempts to have a student loan forgiven.
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“Complete nightmare,” another Reddit poster wrote about the same process. “Delays, errors, and employees that don’t know anything. No one knows anything right now.”
Federal law guarantees that disabled vets’ student loans will be forgiven, for instance, but veterans with total permanent disabilities have reported that their applications for their loans to be discharged were denied. One said the Department of Education followed up with a letter saying the denial was a mistake, but the agency hasn’t explained how to correct it.
The Education Department did not respond to an interview request. The VA declined to answer even general questions about benefit delays unless provided with the names of veterans and colleges that reported problems.
A VA spokesman, Gary Kunich, said no one had been laid off from the agency, which in fact cut 1,000 probationary employees in January and another 1,400 workers in February, though some were temporarily reinstated by a judge. It has announced plans to lay off 30,000 more by the end of September.
Such cuts threaten to “disrupt access to veterans’ education benefits, just as even more veterans and service members may be turning to higher education and career training,” top officials at the American Council on Education, or ACE — the nation’s largest association of colleges and universities — wrote in June.
That’s on top of existing frustrations. Veterans already struggle to get the benefits they’ve earned, college administrators and students say.
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Many colleges and even some prominent veterans’ advocacy groups didn’t want to talk about this. Student Veterans of America, one of the largest advocacy groups for veteran students, did not respond to repeated interview requests. Ten of the colleges and universities that boast large veteran enrollments — including San Diego State, Georgia State, Angelo State, Arizona State and Syracuse — also did not respond or declined to answer questions.
Veterans and advocates are concerned that ongoing Education Department cuts will erode oversight of education institutions that take GI Bill benefits but leave veterans with little in return — primarily for-profit colleges that were found guilty of, and have been punished repeatedly for, defrauding students. In some cases, those colleges suddenly closed before students could finish their degrees, but kept their tuition while leaving them with useless credits or credentials.
Veterans are already twice as likely as other students to attend for-profit colleges, according to the Postsecondary National Policy Institute.
While it might take years until the effects of weakened scrutiny are fully visible, Nassirian said, it already appears that staffing cuts at the divisions within the Education Department that kept an eye on for-profit colleges have led those schools to start targeting veterans again.
“Without a doubt it is now easier for schools that want to push the envelope to get away with it,” he said. “When you have fewer cops on the beat you’re going to see higher crime. And we’re still just a nanosecond into this new environment.”
Veterans can lose their GI Bill benefits even when a college defrauds them.
The risk is particularly high for low-income veterans and those from diverse backgrounds, said Lindsay Church, executive director of Minority Veterans of America. Those student veterans are less likely to have parents who have experience with higher education, Church said, making them more vulnerable to fraud.
But the most immediate problems with staffing cuts are payment delays and paperwork errors, student veterans and their advisers said.
At Pikes Peak State College, a community college in Colorado Springs, some veterans still hadn’t received their GI Bill benefits as the semester wound down in May, said Paul DeCecco, the college’s director of military and veteran programs. Because of trouble reaching counselors at the VA, others were never able to enroll in the first place, DeCecco said.
“Counselors are just overwhelmed and not able to respond to students in a timely manner,” he said. “Students are missing semesters as a result.”
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In the military city of San Diego, where thousands of former and current service members go to college, student veterans at Miramar College this year waited months to hear about VA work-study contracts. Previously approved within days, those contracts allow students to get paid for veteran-related jobs while attending school, said LaChaune DuHart, the school’s director of veterans affairs and military education.
Other veterans went weeks without textbooks because of delayed VA payments, DuHart said.
“A lot of students can’t afford to lose those benefits,” she said, describing the “rage” many student veterans expressed over the long wait times this year. “A lot of times it’s that emotional reaction that causes these students not to come back to an institution,” she said.
Colleges routinely see student veterans quit because of benefit delays, numerous experts and administrators said, something that has gotten worse this year. Several recounted stories of veterans without degrees choosing to look for work rather than continue their education because of frustration with the VA — even though studies show that graduating from college can dramatically increase future earnings.
Those who stayed have faced the added stress of waiting for their benefits, or not being able to get their questions answered.
“We always tell them to be prepared for delays,” said Phillip Morris, an associate professor of education research and leadership at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs who studies student veterans. “But if you can’t pay your rent because your benefits are not flowing the way you’re expecting them to, that’s increasing anxiety and stress that translates to the classroom.”
Contact editor Jon Marcus at 212-678-7556 or jmarcus@hechingerreport.org.
This story about student veterans was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our higher education newsletter. Listen to our higher education podcast.
