Local District 13 congressman David Jolly of Seminole County recently introduced a bill to improve housing opportunities for student veterans, being called the Student Veterans Housing Support Act, or H.R. 2465.
According to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, also known as the VA, nearly $9 billion dollars are annually spent on educational benefits through the Post-9/11 GI Bill. This money is estimated to support nearly 600,000 service-members and veterans through their educational careers, during or after active duty.
But the student benefits have yet to evolve to fit the changing landscape of education- where summer, online, and mixed-mode classes have become frequent in occurrence. Because these formats of education were less prevalent when the GI Bill was last updated in 2008, student veterans have often been met with roadblocks from the VA when taking these non-traditional classes.
The Student Veterans Housing Support act is looking to increase housing benefits to cover school breaks, summer and interval periods, and for students who are in online classes.
UCF Junior and former U.S. Marine Corps serviceman, Jacob Milich, says that he himself has experienced issues from the out-dated terms of the GI Bill and that the passing of this bill would be a positive step forward.
“Since I am a business major, I have to take a lot of lecture capture classes and since those are considered online-classes by the outdated (VA) definition, Fall semester I only received half of my housing stipend,” Milich stated.
Milich, who is also President of the Fraternity Phi Delta Theta, was able to find a job to cover the rest of the funds that the VA did not cover, but not all students are so lucky.
“I hope this bill gets passed so when the next class of veterans gets to UCF, like my brother will be soon, they won’t have to deal with these sort of issues”, Milich said.
Knight News will be tracking this bill and will keep readers up-to-date on the progression of this bill. If you would like more information about resources available to Veterans at the University of Central Florida you can visit the Veteran’s Academic Resource Center (VARC) located near the arena, or online at http://varc.sdes.ucf.edu/.
