Sgt. Wayne Erickson: They want you to become smarter so they’re going to give everything they can for education. And there’s tons of stuff around post. If you want to go to the library, you can go to the library and they hook you up with the CLEP test so you can get your first basically year of college out of the way. You can go sign up for online classes. Basically anything you want to do, the military has it.
Lt. j.g. Andrew Bonderud: After my four-year obligation is up I could choose to stay in the Navy and attend Navy post-graduate school. I could attend a graduate management school and get an MBA free of charge. The Navy would pay for it. There are other programs out there. There is, for example, Olmsted Scholarship Program, where the Navy would pay me salary to go a foreign institution, get a master’s degree free of charge, and then come back to the Navy and use that on active duty.
Senior Airman Jennifer Gayheart: The Air Force has the Community College of the Air Force. So basically what that allows is any credits, all the training that we have been through counts towards an associate’s degree. And then you have your few basic classes that you would need to attend to finish it up.
Staff Sgt. Erik Reichenbach: Every school has a Veteran Affairs representative that will handle any questions you have and help you get all the paperwork you need to fill out and it made the process very streamlined and it was very beneficial.
Lt. Dennis Wischmeier: Every Tuesday afternoons I go to classes right here in Washington, DC, and I’m working on my master’s and the military is paying 100% of it.
Staff Sgt. Michael J. Wulf: There are many educational benefits you can take care of, or take advantage of in the Marine Corps. I fortunately went to my undergraduate program for college before I joined the Marine Corps. About five years later I decided it was something I wanted to do, go back to school. I looked up the GI Bill and I looked up tuition assistance and together I was able to pay for 100% on the tuition, so the next step was just finding the time and so I did distance learning over the Internet.
Lt. Jeanine Menze: The biggest perk as far as assistance for higher education is the GI Bill. You can use that for your undergraduate as well as higher education, so during my off time I have started taking classes to complete a master’s degree in an aeronautical science program. Hopefully space studies, so we’ll see. [LAUGHTER]
[END]
