Marine Corps and Army Tuition Assistance Stops, Other Services May Follow Suit.
73 replies, posted
[QUOTE]The Marine Corps has halted new enrollments for popular tuition assistance programs that now serve several thousand troops earning high school, college, and graduate school credits on their own time in a cost-cutting move brought on by the sequestration spending reductions.Veterans groups feared that the action by the Marines would soon be followed by the other services and also impact several hundred thousand current enrollees in the military's Voluntary Education Tuition Assistance programs.
The Marines stopped enrolling new students for the aid after Navy Secretary Ray Mabus issued a lengthy directive on Saturday that ordered the halt to tuition assistance along with other cost cutting moves made because of sequestration. The announcement was issued to all sailors on March 2.
The assistance had been available for active duty Marines using their own time to attend high school completion courses, vocational courses or classes toward an associate, bachelor, master or doctorate degree.
The Navy, Air Force and Army have similar programs that provide up to $4,500 per fiscal year in tuition assistance, or $250 per semester hour or credit hour.[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE]"It's an unfortunate reality right now," Davis said. "The military preaches higher education from day one – it's a right of passage for higher rank – and now they're cutting the programs."
But on Tuesday, the Defense Department's comptroller's office released guidance directing all the services to consider "significant reductions in funding new tuition assistance applicants for the duration of the current fiscal situation."[/QUOTE]
Source: [URL]http://www.military.com/daily-news/2013/03/05/marines-halt-tuition-assistance-program.html?comp=7000023317828&rank=1[/URL]
The Marines cut, and now I just received guidance from my command that the Army stopped as well. College is huge in the military, and our pay really is not adequate to pay for it out of pocket. It usually takes 6 years for an active duty person to get a bachelor's degree, and you must do it on top of your duties. I have said this time and time again, sequestration is the wrong answer, and congress needs to be ashamed of themselves on how they handled this. There are so many other places in the military they could have made reductions to. Instead, we just were forced to cut by an arbitrary amount. All other pays are going away soon, such as flight pay and language pay. Hell, my meal allowance was eliminated. Things are going to be very rough for military personnel, and government contracted civilian employees. You wanted military cuts? You got them. It is a lot more than the precious fucking Blue Angels, this is people's professional and personal development we are talking about here, as well as forcing even more hardship on military families.
UPDATE: Army officially suspends tuition assistance as well: [URL]http://www.military.com/daily-news/2013/03/08/army-suspends-tuition-assistance-program.html?comp=7000023317828&rank=1[/URL]
Good thing we can still keep our expensive F-35 program going!
Who decides where the cuts are made? I'm not too familiar with this issue. Was the DoD just given a number to reach or did Congress mandate cuts in specific areas?
[QUOTE=plokoon9619;39840710]Good thing we can still keep our expensive F-35 program going![/QUOTE]
Don't want to stop lining the pockets of Lockheed Martin CEOs now, do we?
I know a lot of friends that went into the service just because of benefits like this, taking that away would really mess with their morale. My sister already had to take out loans because her college tuition wasn't even being payed for by the Marine Corps or the payments would be extremely late and wouldn't be accepted.
Ouch... There goes one of the main reasons I was going to go in.
So does this apply to currently enlisted personnel or just to all future enlistees? I'm guessing it's the former, which really blows. Part of the reason I joined up is to help pay for school.
Damn, I'm in ROTC. I hope it doesn't impact the scholarship program I'm trying to get into.
How do you feel now Congress? They probably could give less of a shit seeing as how their incompetence and laziness was the reason why all this happened. Ridiculous, it's like it's a bunch of children playing government or something.
So in order to drop military spending, they dropped the spending that's the most useful.
A+ Congress, good going.
[QUOTE=janky;39840792]So does this apply to currently enlisted personnel or just to all future enlistees? I'm guessing it's the former, which really blows. Part of the reason I joined up is to help pay for school.[/QUOTE]
Everyone man, all tuition assistance is gone.
One of the main reasons I enlisted was for help with college pay, this is bullshit.
Wow... I was going to use this eventually...
Wow. That's sad. If there is one thing I remember constantly it's the fact that joining the military will [I]always[/I] help with paying for college.
I guess this is what happens when people don't fucking learn to pull their heads out of their asses and just agree with each other on occasion though.
haha, okay. This was only one of the (if not the biggest) reasons people join the military. Gotta have those F-35's and air conditioning above all else!
There goes any chance of me enlisting in the Air Force. I mean, Tech School is nice and all but it doesn't give you all the things you need.
God damn, the least we can fucking do for military servicepeople is pay for healthcare and education, and now we're refusing to even do that. All because some assholes in Congress decided to think up some horrible automatic cuts to force themselves into making a decision, then refused to make that decision.
If its true that "News gets more informative the more outraged you are by it", I am so goddamned informed right now that I've got to start telling other people about it.
[QUOTE=General J;39841099][URL="http://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1098924"]Yep[/URL][/QUOTE]
To be fair, it is really, REALLY hot over there. It would be incredibly miserable for everyone involved to not have any sort of AC.
Welp I was going to do ROTC but the cuts on general benefits really make me not want to do that anymore.
Damnit, they could have cut other things! Especially the fucking F-35's, do we really need 1350?
Welcome to austerity.
Correct if I'm wrong here, but it seems like Congress didn't specify where the DoD had to make those cuts; it just specified the total reduction.
What I'm getting at is that I'd be tempted to point the finger at the heads of the DoD, not Congress. If my department is forced to make cuts, I'm going to try my hardest to make those cuts seem unappealing to the general public. Of course, in that position you'd bring the hammer down on all the stuff that looks good in the eyes of the public: educational benefits, travel benefits, airshows, etc. The headlines aren't going to pick up on a nuance like that; it's far more "sexy" for them to further crucify the executive and legislative branches.
Cutting R&D projects might yield greater savings but they come at greater political cost and involve a significant amount of red tape. They are also intended to be spared from reactionary actions since they typically have a long-term perspective.
Should probably fix the education and healthcare system in the US :rolleyes:
But that would be [I]SOCIALISM!![/I]
My chain of command forced me to get my TA signed today.
I knew this was going to happen. The next thing on the chopping block is probably going to be veterans programs.
And the worst thing is, I have a gut feeling that sooner or later we will end up in a war with Iran.
I don't think our military has enough funds to fight a war in this state.
Well, there goes my plan B for paying for college if things go down the shitter for me.
[QUOTE=kman866;39840784]Ouch... There goes one of the main reasons I was going to go in.[/QUOTE]
Same here.
[QUOTE=SKEEA;39840852]Everyone man, all tuition assistance is gone.[/QUOTE]
Marine application rates drop to zero then
I was considering rotc to pay 4 medical school now I'm not
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