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To any spouse who was heading back to college or just starting and planned to use the MyCAA program that is through militaryonesource.com.
This program has stopped effective immediately.
I plan to write and call my congressman, I suggest you do the same.
OMG! Do we know why it was stopped? I read that it was temporary halted to be reformed and that it would not affect people who were currently approved.
Was this done at the congressional level or do you think maybe someone abused the system?
Just another problem with the current administration we have. Of course they're gonna cut worthwhile programs. I guess it just doesn't make sense to them to spend our tax dollars wisely. I'm afraid this may just be the tip of the iceberg. I see drastic cuts being made in military spending, both for active duty and retired/disabled service members. I'm with y'all on raising the flag on this one. Good luck!
Military spouses upset tuition funds stopped
Comments 17 | Recommend 1
March 04, 2010 2:15 AM
HOPE HODGE
Jacksonville military wife Tina Martin is in an educational limbo.
Martin is one of the hundreds of military spouses in Onslow County who had tuition assistance revoked without warning when the Military Spouse Career Advancement Account program (MyCAA) suddenly shut down in February.
Martin was pursuing an associate degree at Coastal Carolina Community College when she found out her tuition assistance would be revoked. She will be able to finish out her semester because the classes had been approved prior to the program halt, but said she had applied for an English class for her next semester that remains unapproved.
“A lot of us are really upset for the fact that there was no warning about it,” Martin said. “If you didn’t have your classes approved by Feb. 16, then oh well.”
Officials at Coastal said they estimated that 700 spouses were attending the college using MyCAA.
Martin said she is not sure how she will continue school in the fall, but she is more upset about how the suspension was handled.
“It was handled horribly, the way they put it out,” Martin said. “Had they put it in such a way that, okay, by such and such a date the program’s going to stop, it would still be upsetting, but it wouldn’t be such a shock.”
Martin said she has yet to receive any direct notice about the end of the program, which had 98,000 military spouses enrolled and 38,000 more who had submitted applications according to numbers from the Department of Defense.
The MyCAA program, which began in March 2009, extended up to $6,000 in tuition grants to military spouses enrolled in college or career training. According to a spokeswoman for the Department of Defense, Air Force Major April Cunningham, the program rapidly gained unexpected popularity, which forced the government to bring it to a halt on Feb. 16.
“In January 2010, MyCAA applications increased six-fold and that trend continued
in February. These applications were overwhelming the system intended to
support the program and almost reached the budget threshold,” Cunningham said.
The DoD has called the halt temporary, but program enrollees call the lack of information during the process frustrating and confusing.
Jacksonville resident Tammy Rodriguez is a military spouse and MyCAA enrollee pursuing a bachelor’s degree at University of North Carolina Wilmington’s Jacksonville campus at CCCC. Rodriguez found out about the program change when her husband, a Cherry Point Marine, heard about it on the radio.
“I logged into my account, and they had taken the remaining balance off my account,” Rodriguez said.
She stayed online long enough to do something about it: She contacted Senators Richard Burr (R-NC) and Kay Hagan (D-NC) and joined the Facebook group, “Take Action Against the MyCAA Shutdown,” which had nearly 1,800 members as of Monday.
Burr has since issued a statement protesting the program’s termination.
“At a time when we are demanding so much from our military families, these spouses deserve an immediate answer from the Department of Defense on why this program has been ended indefinitely,” he said.
Rodriguez knows the program is supposed to resume, but without a clear start-up date, she is looking for other options to help finish her education.
“I may have to look for a part-time job,” she said.
Last week, the MyCAA Web site, a portal at Militaryonesource.com, featured a brief message reading, “effective immediately, the MyCAA program is temporarily halting operations. We are reviewing all procedures, financial assistance documents and the overall program. This pause will not affect approved Financial Assistance documents. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. Please check back for updates.”
On Friday, the site posted a longer message from the DoD acknowledging the suddenness of the shutdown and including a short apology: “We regret the lack of notice in alerting you to the pause and assure you this was done in the best interest of all.”
No date for the program to resume has yet been posted.
“We expect to announce our long-term strategies very soon and will do our best to keep this operational pause to a minimum,” Cunningham said.
Contact Hope Hodge at 910-219-8453 or hhodge@freedomenc.com.
http://www.jdnews.com/news/military-...errer=facebook
YOU GO GIRL......
Ellie
I love that the "best interest of all" excludes hundreds of thousands of military spouses who have to pick up and move once every 1-3 years just because we're told to and who have had NO SAY in the matter.
Kudos, Obama to another failed attempt at being the president who has "Single-handedly done more for military families than any other president in US History."
My wife was one of the many spouses around the globe using MyCAA to further their education. Now she says she might aswell drop out of college completely and get a full-time job.
Mine too,but we PCSd to a place where we didn't qualify so they cut her off anyway
"Halted" is just sugar coating for "Stopped". The program was overwhelmed with how many spouses applied to the program, especially in January of this year. A total of 125,000 spouses applied since the program started. They ran out of money. Although I am upset that the program stopped, I am even more upset at how it was handled. There was no warning whatsoever. I was told by my college counslor, who just happened to get on the website for a completely different reason and I just happened to walk into the office at the same time. I told everyone I knew and started this thread on the same day.
Someone needs to be held accountable for mishandling the program and the mismanagment of the funds. It's not rocket science! If they put aside 6000$ per applicant, then at some point they would have known that the money was going to run out and not approve more spouses. My husband always says "Just because you have checks in the checkbook, doesn't mean you have money in the bank".
The other thing was and maybe I'm wrong, I was under the impression that this money would transfer to other schools, so the spouses didn't have to worry if they had to move.
I also think that people who have not used this program and don't understand how it works are under the impression that the spouses actually got the $6000...as in a check. Which is not the case. I say that because of all the negative responses I read online after the above article ran in the paper.
I will be looking for other scholarships to use for the fall semester and I encourage all spouses to go to Base Education to see what is available to them.
My hope is that this program will be back, but I hope it wont discourage anyone from furthing thier education. Also please contact your congressman about this program.