According to a new report, U.S. military veterans are noticeably underrepresented at our country’s most selective four-year colleges.
Ithaka S+R found that only 722 out of nearly 900,000 undergraduate veterans using the Post-9/11 GI Bill and Yellow Ribbon funds were enrolled at the nation’s 36 most-selective private colleges, and that veterans were half as likely to enroll in institutions with high graduation rates. The report notes that only one in ten veterans using GI Bill benefits enrolls in institutions with graduation rates exceeding 70 percent and one in three attends a for-profit institution. While student veterans comprised 5 percent of all undergraduate and graduate student enrollment in 2016, they made up 13 percent of students enrolled at for-profit schools.
“Veterans who have served our nation deserve the opportunity to access the pathways to leadership and opportunity that are disproportionately found at well-resourced colleges,” the report argues. “Enrolling more veterans would further these institutions’ commitments to diversify the backgrounds and perspectives of their students, which benefits all students.”
While our nation’s top colleges and universities are excited to point out their international student enrollment rates and their efforts to attract ethnically diverse students, they have done a poor job of attracting and recruiting those students who were willing to put their lives on the line for our freedom. The diversity of their experience is an education in and of itself to the other students that surround them.
By better serving our nation’s veteran population, these colleges could restore “the public trust that has been severely challenged in recent years,” the report suggests.
Columbia University offers a brilliant model for attracting veterans. Its School of General Studies allows student veterans to transfer existing credits, and as a result, enrolled nearly 500 undergraduate student veterans, dwarfing the veteran enrollment of other prestigious schools.
The issue that veterans find in most well-known schools is that they accept very few transfers. This, combined with financial aid struggles and limited efforts to recruit veterans, has pushed veterans toward colleges that have fewer resources and higher dropout rates.
As a whole, private nonprofit and public flagship colleges and universities can and should do more to attract veteran students. Many of these colleges invest millions of dollars into diversity and inclusion programs, hire new administrators to attract and retain underserved minority groups, and spend countless hours of staff time pontificating about the benefits of diversity — yet they have all but ignored veterans, who proudly represent only 7 percent of U.S. adults.
Veterans deserve better. We owe it to them.
Brendan Pringle (@BrendanPringle) is writer from California. He is a National Journalism Center graduate and formerly served as a development officer for Young America’s Foundation at the Reagan Ranch.
