If you or someone you know is a veteran and was able to secure college tuition for their dependent(s), that’s great. It means you or the veteran you know was disabled enough and/or was in the right place at the right time and/or is so dirt poor s/he qualified for assistance by virtue of poverty. You are in the minority. There are hundreds of thousands of veterans’ dependents who will be graduating college with a boatload of loan debt because of the many cracks in the system.

Most glaring is the crack that requires a veteran’s dependent to be living in, a resident of, and going to school in the same state as the veteran. This is a requirement of every state in the union. It is most notably a requirement of every dependent of an active duty servicemember where said member is not deployed - and even then, there are still those states that will refuse dependents an in-state rate. If this first requirement is not met, all else is lost - and the dependent will be graduating with the aforementioned boatload of debt unless his/her family income is at or below poverty level.

The second most glaring crack is the amount of tuition debt incurred between the time a veteran retires (or separates from service) and the day a disability percentage is determined by the Veterans Administration (VA). The process of determining a disability percentage can take anywhere from six months to over a year. If the percentage of disability is not great enough or no disability is found, the applicant will be refused assistance.

While the veteran is waiting for a disability percentage verdict from the Veterans Administration, the dependent does not qualify for any program offered to the dependents of veterans. The veteran can fill out the application and be reimbursed for tuition paid (from the day of application) after a qualifying verdict has been reached, however, research by this writer has not found this to have happened in even one case.

This is primarily because most veterans cannot afford to pay their dependents’ tuition upfront and await reimbursement. The dependent (and/or the veteran) is then in the position of having to take out loans unless their income is at or below poverty level. Any tuition paid by any means other than out of the veteran’s pocket while the veteran awaits a verdict does not qualify for reimbursement.

Only the Army allows transfer of GI Bill benefits to dependents, and there are many cracks here as well. The Air Force and Navy have such strict conditions for transferring benefits that it negates any benefit that could be had by doing so.

The third most glaring crack is the veteran’s income. While no state can (or will?) tell you what their income cutoff is (trust me, the figure changes just by hanging up, calling back, and speaking to a different representative at the same number in any given state), the most common experience is rejection based on too much income. Any income the dependent makes counts toward total income.