thedrifter
12-01-06, 03:29 PM
GI Bill helping a new generation learn
By Lisa Petrillo
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
November 30, 2006
SAN MARCOS – Chad Hill, a decorated Iraq war veteran, is now deployed as a freshman at California State University San Marcos.
He's part of the first wave of returning war vets nationwide studying Plato and Pythagoras, while learning to assimilate into campus life.
Hill, 26, has found it's not easy. “I've snapped a couple of times; I'm adjusting.”
Early in his first semester, he blasted classmates for rudeness and inattention when they took turns making speeches. The professor thanked him, he said with satisfaction, but Hill knows now that he's off the battlefield he's got to work on his “take command” reflex.
Welcome to the GI Bill, post-Afghanistan and Iraq invasion.
It's been more than 75 years since President Franklin D. Roosevelt launched the program that has turned more than 21 million veterans into students.
Next year as many as 14,300 veterans are expected to use the GI Bill and various military educational benefits in California's public colleges.Most of them are expected to study at lower-cost community colleges, but the California State University system is expecting 4,700 and 1,600 are projected to enroll at University of California campuses.
Hill is part of an elite Marine Corps officer-training program in which only about 120 qualify for a year. Instead of waiting until they leave the service to use their federal education benefits, these officer-trainees remain on active-duty status but sit out the war while they earn degrees in four years. In exchange, they pledge to become officers and stay in the Corps longer.
For Hill, the challenge has been to regain his academic footing after nearly a decade away from school.
“I hate reading. To just sit there and read about some little thing just isn't something I like to do,” said Hill, as he sat at the cafe veranda at the San Marcos campus.
Once, he was one of the smartest in his Texas high school, Hill said, but he turned down college scholarship offers for the action of the Marine Corps.
In Iraq he fought in Ramadi, then one of the bloodiest centers of the long-running war that has killed more than 2,870 U.S. service members. He talks about his platoon being cut down repeatedly by roadside bombs, about his commanding officer being blown up in his Humvee. He has seen innocent people taken by war, many of them children as young as his toddler daughter.
These are things he talks about not with classmates, but only with fellow combat veterans. “Some people don't need to know some things,” he said.
Joan Putnam, veteran coordinator for San Diego State University, said everybody wins when veterans enter the classroom.
“Students today think of vets as their grandfathers. It's good for them to hear from one from their own generation,” she said.
Putnam reminds vets to stay open-minded regarding their classmates. “They'll have to learn how to relate to the young ones whose biggest dilemma that day may be what cell phone cover to put on.”
As more military personnel leave war behind in the Middle East, California's higher education system is gearing up to help them. Putnam serves on a statewide task force to expand the state's contribution to federal veterans' benefits, especially for the many reservists and National Guard members whose benefits are lower.
The GI Bill in its current incarnation provides far less than World War II levels, but Hill gets enough to cover the more than $3,000 a year tuition.
Financially, he finds being a full-time student a struggle, with the hefty cost of textbooks, rent and the rising cost of gas commuting to school – a struggle that makes him far more of a typical college student.
Hill has an ambitious academic schedule in a university system where fewer than half the students graduate even after six years.
But he benefits from some key things few classmates get: Unprecedented help reaching graduation with weekly visits with academic advisers, who are in the military.
The Marines give officer candidates crucial academic guidance on top of the advisement by mapping their course schedules for the next four years – summers included. They also get remedial educational help at a summer boot camp at San Diego's Marine Corps Recruit Depot.
Therein lies the key to earning a college degree, according to the Department of Defense: “Desire and enthusiasm are definite assets, but there is no substitute for scholarship. Scholarship, however, will not assure student success unless accompanied by dedication.”
The success rate for the academic achievement of Marine vets is high, said Capt. Teresa Ovalle, a Marine Corps spokeswoman in Quantico, Va. “It's their one chance to be something different.”
Lisa Petrillo: (760) 737-7563; lisa.petrillo@uniontrib.com
Ellie
By Lisa Petrillo
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
November 30, 2006
SAN MARCOS – Chad Hill, a decorated Iraq war veteran, is now deployed as a freshman at California State University San Marcos.
He's part of the first wave of returning war vets nationwide studying Plato and Pythagoras, while learning to assimilate into campus life.
Hill, 26, has found it's not easy. “I've snapped a couple of times; I'm adjusting.”
Early in his first semester, he blasted classmates for rudeness and inattention when they took turns making speeches. The professor thanked him, he said with satisfaction, but Hill knows now that he's off the battlefield he's got to work on his “take command” reflex.
Welcome to the GI Bill, post-Afghanistan and Iraq invasion.
It's been more than 75 years since President Franklin D. Roosevelt launched the program that has turned more than 21 million veterans into students.
Next year as many as 14,300 veterans are expected to use the GI Bill and various military educational benefits in California's public colleges.Most of them are expected to study at lower-cost community colleges, but the California State University system is expecting 4,700 and 1,600 are projected to enroll at University of California campuses.
Hill is part of an elite Marine Corps officer-training program in which only about 120 qualify for a year. Instead of waiting until they leave the service to use their federal education benefits, these officer-trainees remain on active-duty status but sit out the war while they earn degrees in four years. In exchange, they pledge to become officers and stay in the Corps longer.
For Hill, the challenge has been to regain his academic footing after nearly a decade away from school.
“I hate reading. To just sit there and read about some little thing just isn't something I like to do,” said Hill, as he sat at the cafe veranda at the San Marcos campus.
Once, he was one of the smartest in his Texas high school, Hill said, but he turned down college scholarship offers for the action of the Marine Corps.
In Iraq he fought in Ramadi, then one of the bloodiest centers of the long-running war that has killed more than 2,870 U.S. service members. He talks about his platoon being cut down repeatedly by roadside bombs, about his commanding officer being blown up in his Humvee. He has seen innocent people taken by war, many of them children as young as his toddler daughter.
These are things he talks about not with classmates, but only with fellow combat veterans. “Some people don't need to know some things,” he said.
Joan Putnam, veteran coordinator for San Diego State University, said everybody wins when veterans enter the classroom.
“Students today think of vets as their grandfathers. It's good for them to hear from one from their own generation,” she said.
Putnam reminds vets to stay open-minded regarding their classmates. “They'll have to learn how to relate to the young ones whose biggest dilemma that day may be what cell phone cover to put on.”
As more military personnel leave war behind in the Middle East, California's higher education system is gearing up to help them. Putnam serves on a statewide task force to expand the state's contribution to federal veterans' benefits, especially for the many reservists and National Guard members whose benefits are lower.
The GI Bill in its current incarnation provides far less than World War II levels, but Hill gets enough to cover the more than $3,000 a year tuition.
Financially, he finds being a full-time student a struggle, with the hefty cost of textbooks, rent and the rising cost of gas commuting to school – a struggle that makes him far more of a typical college student.
Hill has an ambitious academic schedule in a university system where fewer than half the students graduate even after six years.
But he benefits from some key things few classmates get: Unprecedented help reaching graduation with weekly visits with academic advisers, who are in the military.
The Marines give officer candidates crucial academic guidance on top of the advisement by mapping their course schedules for the next four years – summers included. They also get remedial educational help at a summer boot camp at San Diego's Marine Corps Recruit Depot.
Therein lies the key to earning a college degree, according to the Department of Defense: “Desire and enthusiasm are definite assets, but there is no substitute for scholarship. Scholarship, however, will not assure student success unless accompanied by dedication.”
The success rate for the academic achievement of Marine vets is high, said Capt. Teresa Ovalle, a Marine Corps spokeswoman in Quantico, Va. “It's their one chance to be something different.”
Lisa Petrillo: (760) 737-7563; lisa.petrillo@uniontrib.com
Ellie