SecDef review pauses tuition assistance changes - Army News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Army Times

SecDef review pauses tuition assistance changes

The future of tuition assistance for active-duty service members is in limbo as Defense Secretary Leon Panetta works on a wide-ranging review of military benefits.

Officials say Panetta has been so tight-lipped about the review that they can’t even guess at a completion date.

Robert Gordon III, deputy undersecretary of defense for military community and family policy, said at an education conference Tuesday that any changes to tuition assistance are frozen until that review wraps up.

“As we look at everything from health care to education, some of those have been bundled up in a review, and our secretary of defense is looking at those right now,” Gordon said.

Carolyn Baker, chief of the Defense Department’s continuing education programs, said Panetta has leaked little information about the review, even to other people inside the department.

Tuition assistance spun into turmoil last fall when the Marine Corps announced Oct. 17 that it was slashing its maximum annual benefits from $4,500 to $875. Nine days later, the Corps rolled back those change on orders from DoD, but Corps officials warned they expected to run out of money for the program before the end of the fiscal year.

Baker said so far all the services have found the money to fund their TA programs, and she hopes they can continue through the rest of the fiscal year. Policy dictates that every service member who qualifies for TA will receive it, she noted.

Asked about the consequences if the Marine Corps’ TA program runs out of money, Gordon said, “I don’t expect that to happen.”

The future of TA is also bound up in a dispute over a memorandum of understanding that DoD wanted all colleges to sign by Jan. 1, 2012.

The new rules called for schools to be flexible about transferring credits from other schools, granting academic credit for military training, and limiting full-time residency requirements to accommodate troops who frequently move.

After an outcry from some high-profile colleges and politicians, DoD delayed the signing deadline until the end of March.

Baker said that many of the schools’ concerns have been answered by rewriting the MOU to make it clear, for example, that colleges aren’t required to accept military training and education for college credit, but are simply required to review that training and consider it for credit.

But she said some colleges are against even examining a service member’s military transcript. And the clarifications do not answer concerns from veterans groups and the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee about aggressive school recruiting practices and loan default rates by some for-profit schools.

Baker said she can’t speculate about what will be included in the final MOU.

“It’s really all tied up with me working with the [Senate] committee,” she said. “We don’t know what the outcome’s going to be.”