FORT CAMPBELL, Ky.
With a fattened GI Bill covering full tuition and more, the number of veterans attending college this fall is expected to jump 30 percent from last year to nearly half a million. That’s left many universities looking for ways to ease the transition from combat to the classroom.
Vets already in school have run into problems including campus bureaucracy, crowds that can trigger alarm instincts honed by war and fellow students who don’t understand their battlefield experiences.
In response, colleges across the country are offering veterans-only classes, adding counselors and streamlining the application and financial aid process.
Under the new GI Bill expanded by Congress last year, the number of military veterans either starting or continuing their studies this fall is expected to top 460,000, up from 354,000 last autumn, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Many of them will encounter a classroom culture shock that can leave them agitated.
Ask Colin Closs, a former Fort Campbell soldier studying at Cleveland State University in Ohio, what bothers him most about how veterans are treated on campus and he lists strange and sometimes rude questions people have asked.
