Florida - The Nation's Thanks

A new GI Bill makes a UF education financially attainable for the latest generation of veterans.

GI Bills at a Glance

2 Types of GI Bills: the Montgomery GI Bill, which since the 1980s has required veterans to pay into their educations while they served, and the Post 9/11 GI Bill, which took effect Aug. 1 and does not require a pay-in.

$1,200 Cost to veterans to receive the Montgomery GI Bill. To be eligible, a student must have signed up at the outset of his or her military career.

$0 Cost to veterans for Post 9/11 GI Bill. Benefits are available to military personnel even if they did not sign up at enlistment.

90 Days of active service a veteran must have served since Sept. 11, 2001, to be eligible for the new GI Bill benefits.

36 Months of active duty a veteran must have served to get 100 percent benefits paid over 36 months. Benefits decrease as length of service decreases — a veteran with only 90 aggregate days of active duty would receive 40 percent of the benefit.

$67,000 Amount UF student veterans could receive using the Post 9/11 GI Bill, including tuition, fees, $1,000 for books and supplies, money for tutoring and $1,290 for housing (based on taking 15 hours per semester and 10 hours in the summer for three years).

$49,248 Amount UF student veterans would receive within three years on the Montgomery GI Bill.

$70,000 Total amount a UF student veteran could receive by exhausting his or her Montgomery benefits, plus one year of Post 9/11 benefits to finish a four-year degree.

6 Years a service member must serve to be eligible to transfer his or her Post 9/11 GI Bill benefits to an immediate family member. The service member must also commit to serve four more years in the military.

15 Years veterans have from the time they are discharged to use their Post 9/11 GI Bill benefits.

For more information, visit www.service2scholars.org. Sources: Veterans Affairs Administration and UF documents.

Julio Morelos (3ENG) tried to go to college while on active duty in the Air Force. But that mission was sidetracked three times by overseas deployments, including one to Afghanistan where he worked as a facilities engineer and twice volunteered to help neutralize weapons caches.

For Morelos, who wants to become a structural engineer, a new Post 9/11 GI Bill is bringing both extra money — and peace of mind.

"It allows me to finish up what I started eight years ago," says Morelos, a former sergeant, now a junior studying civil engineering at UF.

"The GI Bill benefits ... are too good. If I don't use it now, I'll never use it," Morelos says.

With the days of bullets and roadside bombs behind them, student veterans are saluting the more lucrative Post 9/11 GI Bill, the latest chapter of a World War II-era program that brought thousands of veterans to UF more than 60 years ago.

The updated bill is seen by many as a fitting reward for service members who faced danger, injury and death during military service since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Getting Their Due

Before the Post 9/11 GI Bill, service members were required to sign up early in their military careers and pay $100 a month for a year to be eligible for the Montgomery GI Bill. It pays veterans $1,368 a month or $49,248 over 36 months.

The Post 9/11 GI Bill pays a UF student as much as $18,000 more because it covers tuition, fees, up to $1,000 a year for books and supplies, plus tutoring fees and $1,280 a month for housing expenses.

Many student veterans today are eligible for both versions of the bill: three years of Montgomery payments and a year of Post 9/11 benefits. Student veterans who qualify for four years can earn up to $70,000 in educational payments.

Another recent change in the law means that support from GI Bill benefits can no longer count against students when they apply for other financial aid.

"This is a 747 compared to a four-engine Constellation," Mark Rosenberg, former chancellor of Florida's State University System, says of the new GI Bill. Rosenberg, now president of Florida International University, led the charge to get universities prepared for the increase in student veterans.

The Path to a Degree

Tamsen Pintler, an Army medic, treated more than 100 soldiers during her deployment to Iraq. Now she is close to getting her bachelor's degree in nursing at Santa Fe College in Gainesville.

One of many student veterans whose educational careers will take them from Santa Fe to UF, Pintler is on track to enroll in UF's master's degree program in nursing.

"I have a 3-year-old I have to take care of," Pintler says as her daughter, Sahara, jabbers and plays in the background. "I couldn't have a full-time job and go to school and take care of my daughter."

There were about 17,000 student veterans in Florida in spring 2009, a number that is expected to rise substantially this year, according to the Board of Governors' staff. UF veteran advocate John Gebhardt says he expects the school's veteran student population to grow from 380 last year to about 640 this year.

Decades of Giving Back

More than 60 years ago the famed World War II GI Bill transformed UF. The bill was the ticket to Gainesville that swelled the campus by nearly 8,000 men just back from fighting.

Those soldier-scholars went on to earn enough money in life that their taxes repaid the government's largess many times over, officials estimate.

Today the degree is just as valuable, but the number of veterans on campuses is not nearly as great. That's because America has a smaller, all-volunteer military. It runs without the massive comings and goings of drafted soldiers such as those who fought in World War II and stayed until it was over.

Like their World War II counterparts, however, today's veterans are often more focused and mature, Gebhardt says. They make very good students — but they aren't just undergraduates anymore.

Many student veterans who have exhausted their old GI Bill benefits are using the new bill to enroll in graduate courses, Gebhardt says. That's because the Post 9/11 GI Bill allows veterans to apply their tuition benefits toward graduate school, but only at the undergraduate rate.

"Glory hallelujah, isn't this wonderful? They have earned it," says Gebhardt, who has helped keep UF a leader among U.S. schools dealing with veterans' issues.

Still to surface are the veterans who didn't sign up for Montgomery GI Bill benefits but, because of the economy or just a desire to get a college education, will take advantage of the Post 9/11 GI Bill, Gebhardt says.

Service personnel have 15 years from their discharges to use the benefits. Most will likely show up first at community colleges.

Help During Hard Times

Going to school makes sense to veterans such as Nate Evans (3ALS), a married father of two who commutes to UF from the family's rental home outside Alachua.

"Having this benefit available is huge because we can kind of ride this [tough economic] storm out a little bit, support our families ... and improve ourselves," says Evans, who served six years in the Army.

Evans spent part of his time in the Army as a Blackhawk helicopter mechanic. He was deployed to Afghanistan where he drove convoy trucks, helped local government officials build schools and power generators and worked with local police.

Evans couldn't find a suitable job in California after his discharge, so he and the family returned to his wife's native Florida. Now he is a junior majoring in food resource economics.

His wife, JeanAnn (BS '03), is an animal technician in the Intensive Care Unit of the UF Veterinary Medical Clinic. Evans is considering law school, and he wants to spend a portion of his time doing volunteer work for veterans and others.

All for One ...

Veterans at UF and Santa Fe are a tight-knit group. One soldier who helps keep them together is Jason Yulee (3LS).

Were it not for the GI Bill, he says, "I would probably be working full time and trying to attend classes when I had time."

Now he can concentrate on classes and on his responsibilities to others in the collegiate veterans' society.

"The toughest thing for most college students is just paying the tuition and books ... and lab fees, etc.," says Yulee, an Army radio and computer network specialist who served in Iraq. Yulee's father became a police officer using the GI Bill. Yulee is studying political science and plans to apply to law school at UF.

Former Chancellor Rosenberg sees the new bill as an education boon and a message.

"It's a statement of gratitude on the part of this country, which the veterans deserve," Rosenberg says. "They have made significant sacrifices in very extreme conditions for their country."