Glenn Lacroix, a junior psychology major at the University of Arizona, shows patches left by other members of the Student Veterans of America at UA, organization that he presides. (Luciana Morales/NYTI)
A large cardboard bunker, covered in camouflage netting with green sandbags hanging off the side, is the first thing you see when you walk into an office on the fourth floor of the student union at the University of Arizona. The office is unlike any other on the vast campus.
A map of the world dotted with multicolored pins representing places soldiers have served hangs on one wall. Several teddy bears wearing sweaters with the insignias of the different military branches sit atop a bookcase. Clocks show the time in Kabul, Afghanistan, and Baghdad.
This is the office of Veterans Education and Transition Services, an increasingly important resource for veterans who are now students: a place to relax and chat between classes with people who have shared experiences. It is also a place to study, receive tutoring or play video games. In addition, it serves as a place to start navigating the bureaucracy of higher education.
It is now busier than ever. When it opened last spring, a handful of veterans would drop in each week. Since then, it has been seeing about 60 a day.
The story is much the same at many community colleges and universities across the country. The number of veterans enrolling in schools has been rising steadily, but higher-education officials are anticipating a major surge as more veterans take advantage of a new GI Bill, which provides benefits more generous than its predecessor’s.
Most veterans are enrolled in two-year colleges, and a smaller number are studying at four-year colleges, according to the American Council on Education, which represents 1,800 higher-education institutions nationwide.
Of the 40,000 students enrolled at the University of Arizona, 800 to 850 are veterans. This is an increase from last year, although Maralynn Bernstein, program coordinator at the office of the registrar, could not provide precise figures. “It’s definitely a rising trend,” she said.
Glen Lacroix, a student at the University of Arizona and president of the campus’ chapter of the Student Veterans of America, said the university was anticipating that about 2,850 veterans in community colleges in southeastern Arizona would transfer to the university in the next two years.
At Miami Dade College in Florida, one of the nation’s largest community colleges, with 160,000 students on eight campuses, the number of student veterans increased by nearly 43 percent between 2008 and 2009, to 964 students from 675, according to school figures.
At Pima Community College in Tucson, 1,283 veterans were enrolled in the fall, an increase of 171 from the spring, school officials said.
The American Association of Community Colleges, which represents more than 1,000 community, junior and technical colleges, said many community colleges reported similar increases, especially at schools near military bases.
The new GI bill, which applies to veterans who were on active duty after Sept. 10, 2001, and went into effect in August 2009, is expected to pave the way to college for many more veterans. Benefits, which include tuition and fees, are paid directly to schools. Veterans who use the bill are also given a stipend for housing and supplies.
The previous bill provided students a monthly lump sum for tuition that was sometimes lower than the amount allotted by the new bill, and it did not provide a housing stipend.
Under the new bill, some veterans have complained that the processing of payments has taken too long. The federal government says it is striving to keep up with increased demand.
But many veterans say the new bill is helping students get the education they need to compete in a difficult economy.
“In 10 to 15 years, instead of having to take care of its veterans, we’ll see a country that is excelling” because of its veterans, said Lacroix, the Student Veterans of America chapter president, a former Army intelligence officer who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Opportunity and Adjustment
Two years before retiring from the Air Force, Kevin Oster started thinking about college. Oster, 47, wanted to work for a defense contractor but knew he would need a degree.
The GI bill has helped Oster, who lives in Vail, Ariz., get associate’s and bachelor’s degrees. He is now pursuing a master’s degree in aeronautical science through a distance-learning program offered by Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida.
Oster, formerly a master sergeant, said that without the bill, “I never would have been able to have my degrees.” The bill will pay all of Oster’s $12,720 tuition.
Kyle Hough, 27, left the Army on a medical discharge in 2003 after breaking two bones in his lower back when he fell 60 feet down a well in Afghanistan.
Unhappy with the jobs he found after leaving the Army, Hough, a former ranger, decided to attend college to become a high school science teacher. “I knew I wasn’t ready for college out of high school, mentally and financially,” said Hough, referring to his decision to join the military. He is now a junior at the University of Arizona.
Adjusting to college life is often difficult for veterans, especially for those who have served in combat in either Afghanistan or Iraq. Older than traditional college students, veterans, whose concerns often center on paying college bills or taking care of their families, say it can be hard to relate to students who focus more on parties and relationships.
Jamie Jansen, 29, a sergeant in the Army Reserve and a junior at the University of Arizona, said she juggled classes while taking care of her 4-year-old daughter and 2-year-old son. “You can’t say, ‘Sorry, I’m not going to feed you now. I have homework,’” Jansen said. “The homework always comes last.”
Jansen, accustomed to strict military discipline, doesn’t understand how some students treat professors in classes: sleeping, surfing the Web or walking out to go to the bathroom.
In the military, “you sit down and shut up,” she said. “Respect is everything in the military; you work your entire career to earn it.”
Hough, the former Army ranger, said he often didn’t tell other students he was a veteran. He was tired of being asked if he had ever killed anyone, he said.
“That’s one of the questions you don’t ask a veteran,” Hough said.
He remembers becoming angry in a science class when a student made a joke about a landmine exploding. Hough could vividly recall an episode in Afghanistan when a mine exploded and injured a 10-year-old boy. He told his classmates that “if they’d actually seen someone get hurt by a landmine, they wouldn’t be laughing.”
A Different Kind of Student
Hough and other veterans described another sobering difference between themselves and most fellow students: the veterans cannot fall asleep without taking a gun to bed.
“We come back hypervigilant,” said Lacroix, the University of Arizona student, who described four instances in Afghanistan and Iraq when children made to wear suicide vests blew up in front of him. “We can’t concentrate. We’re too busy watching everything that’s going on around us. We had to be aware all the time.”
In an effort to help veterans cope with the stress that has followed them home, the University of Arizona offers a variety of programs to teach them how to adjust to their new roles as students.
The university’s programs are part of a broader effort by colleges to make campus life easier for veterans.
The American Council on Education, in a report last year, found that many more colleges were offering academic tutoring and counseling for post-traumatic stress order, and were teaching professors that veterans were a different kind of student.
Miami Dade College, for example, hosts a veterans’ fair every year, where student veterans can meet with representatives from the local Veterans Affairs hospital and the VA’s regional office.
Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, Democrat of Arizona, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, said the new GI bill was an important way to recognize the contribution of veterans who had put their lives on the line.
“Our veterans were there for us,” she said in an e-mail message. “We need to be there for them.”
Some veterans compared the new GI Bill to the one created during World War II that helped propel millions of veterans into the middle class.
“People that could have never gone to college because of that opportunity became the greatest generation,” Lacroix said. “I think we are going to see similar results.”
A version of this article appeared in print on page 1 of the Tucson 2010 edition of The New York Times Student Journalism Institute.