Student veterans seeking associate and bachelor’s degrees under the GI Bill have slightly better graduation rates than their nonveteran peers, data from a new Student Veterans of America study suggests.
SVA’s Million Records Project also found that students who start school at for-profit institutions have slightly lower chances of success than those who start at nonprofit colleges and universities.
Nearly 64 percent of students who started at private schools earned a degree. For public schools, the number was just under 51 percent; for for-profit schools it was just under 45 percent.
“Americans have invested substantial dollars in giving our veterans an opportunity to further their education, and this report shows many positive signs that they are doing just that,” Wayne Robinson, SVA’s president and CEO, said in a written statement.
“The majority of student veterans accessing their GI Bill benefits are completing degrees and showing unparalleled determination to do so, despite many unique barriers.”
The group’s study is perhaps the most comprehensive look at the academic success rates of veterans ever attempted, examining the records of 788,915 student vets who used either the Montgomery or Post-9/11 GI Bill from 2002 to 2010. It drew on information from the Veterans Affairs Department and the National Student Clearinghouse, an academic data research organization.
Some 59 percent of veterans within the study earned a bachelor’s degree in the six-year timeframe typically considered to calculate graduation rates. In comparison, just under 56 percent of students across all four-year schools graduated in that timeframe, according to the most recent Education Department data available.
About 43 percent of student vets earned associate degrees within the three-year timeframe typically used to calculate that degree’s graduation rate. Meanwhile, only 33 percent of students across all two-year institutions graduated in that timeframe, Education Department data show.
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