The Army College Fund and Pell Grant

As the 4.5 of you who read this blog know, I spent some time in the US Army and that was how I paid for my undergraduate degree. I will now convey the story and the dirty little secret that the Army and the Veterans Administration (VA) use on people.

When I was 17, I knew a few things. One thing was that I really liked sports, boxing in particular. My hopes were to become a professional athlete. That obviously didn't happen. The other thing I knew was that I was not going to be able to pay for college. No one in my family had ever gone so it really did seem like a dream. Plus, we were poor and no one was going to be able to help pay for it. Not one cent. It is a shame that I never heard about the Pell Grant. I have had many conversations about Pell since high school and all of my former classmates say that it was mentioned. Somehow, I missed that entire discussion. Those of you who know me have heard me say that I will one day invent a time machine. I'm going to go back in time to the day that the words "Pell Grant" were discussed and slap the hell out of myself for not listening. However, I'll talk more about it later in this post as to why I doubt it would have been enough to go straight from high school to college for someone like me. 

I signed up for the US Army when I was still in my senior year of high school and didn't ship out to basic training until about 3 weeks after graduation. My time waiting counted towards my rank due to something called the Delayed Entry Program. Thus, I went to basic training as a Private E2. I was not the lowest ranked slug in the entire Army. I was the second to the lowest ranked slug in the entire Army!

At this time back in 1986, the pay for someone at my glorious rank was a whopping $400 per month. The Army told us that we were getting a deal. After all, we didn't need to pay rent since they provided us with housing. We didn't need to pay for clothes since they gave us uniforms for free. In addition, we didn't need to pay for food. What a total crock of nonsense. The "housing" was an army barracks. Ugh. The "clothes" were army uniforms which you could only wear if every bit was on properly. No running to the store in your pants and a T shirt. Plus, that stuff was hot! I don't normally wear wool socks and leather boots when it's 90 degrees out. The "food" was, well interesting. All I'll say is that you should please go look up the phrase "army food SOS" and see what you get. 

What my recruiter also failed to tell me was that simply signing up for the Army College Fund wasn't enough. If I really wanted to get that money for college later, I'd need to have $100 deducted from my pay every month for the first year that I was in. Think about what that meant, for the first year that I was in the Army, I'd have to give up 25% of my pay. Of course, for me, the math was simple in that I'd sacrifice $1200 to get access to $25,000 in money for college. I certainly didn't like giving up that $100 a month. I definitely didn't like it, given that no one mentioned that this was coming. However, it's written right on the website of the VA. See here. 

Some of my peers signed up too but after a few months, they quit the program. Some were sending money back home or had families off base to support. The Army was more than happy to refund them all of the money that they had deposited. Why? Once a person dropped out of the program they were never eligible for that college money again, unless they reenlisted and gave up the $1200 in the first year of their second enlistment. Are you joking? It is my rough estimate that only about 10% of us enlistees signed up for the program. I'd also guess that half of them dropped out during the first year. Of course, those are my own numbers and I could be way off but it was a shame. Some guy thinks that driving a tank is a skill that's going to get him a job in the civilian labor force and, thus, doesn't need to go to college. You fool!

I never did become a professional athlete (shame) so when I was discharged from the Army, I was ready to cash in my chips and go to college. I had given up my $1200 and I had not gotten into too much trouble. I moved back to my hometown, Milwaukee and went down to the only college I knew how to locate in the city, the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee. I know some of you are saying that Marquette University is in the city also but, give me a break, from where I grew up, both places could have been on the moon for as much as I knew about college.

I was so naive that when I showed up that day in July of 1989, I thought that I could just sit down and start "college". I had brought a paper bag with some sandwiches for lunch since I figured that a day of college would wear me out. Did I mention that I wore a suit down there that day and every day after? Click here to see how I looked every day of college.

I was told that I'd need to take an entrance exam, which I did and then that I should stop by the financial aide office. I was adamant that I did NOT need to go to financial aide. Uncle Sam was footing the bill for me and that was that! I figured that they'd send olde Mr. Whiskers a bill and he'd pay up. They made me go anyway and to my surprise, the student worker behind the counter in the office was a girl who I had gone to high school with named Stacy. We recognized each other and she was so very helpful in explaining how things would work. She said that I'd also be eligible for a Pell Grant since I was clearly first-generation, unemployed, and very poor. She didn't mention it but I'm sure she thought I was quite stupid in thinking I could sit down and have "college" that day. 

I filled out my paperwork so that the VA would give me my money. It came as a shock to me that the VA wasn't actually in the college tuition business. The way things worked was that at the end of every month, the VA would send me a form to fill out which I had to sign and verify that I was still in college and had not flunked out or something. I had to write down the number of days that month that I attended class. I had to then go to the post office and mail that form back to them. They were then verifying that information with the university that I had listed as where I was attending school. (Remember these were the days before the internet) About 2 weeks later, the VA would then send me a paper check which I had to take to the bank to cash. 

It was always funny watching me waiting for that verification letter to come in the mailbox. Most times, I'd have a stamp in my bookbag so that when I got the letter, I could sign it and put the stamp on it in seconds. I couldn't wait for some silly postman to come get the letter out of a mailbox so I'd drive downtown to the 24-hour post office. The sooner that thing got back to the VA, the sooner they'd send me my check!

So why did this verification thing matter when it came to being a college student? Because at the beginning of the semester, the university wanted all of its tuition money. They weren't interested in getting a little bit every month which is how the money was coming to me from the VA. You had 3 weeks or so to get that balance cleared or you were out. I could have gotten a loan from a bank and then paid them back, bit-by-bit as I got the VA money. Not what I wanted to do.

This is where the Pell Grant came in. Pell money came as a lump sum at the beginning of the semester and depending on where you were attending college it could actually cover your tuition or greatly cut into it. But Pell came with a catch, which I saw snare many of my fellow first-generation college students. During my first semester of college in 1989, the tuition was about $1000. Back then, Pell gave me about $1100 for that semester. That was a great deal since we all got to pocket that $100 difference. Cool!

The downside was that every year, tuition would go up and what you got from Pell went down, the longer you were in college. In fact, by my senior year in 1992, tuition was up to $1600 and Pell was down to $200. Many of my peers ended up working more and more hours at some job and many dropped out or were put on academic probation. I still had my GI Bill money to get me over the hump every semester although it got increasingly difficult to navigate paying tuition without borrowing given the timing. 

I graduated with my degree in economics in May of 1993. The costs of an education aren't "free" even if you have grants or Army money. I was poor and uninformed about what college was and how to navigate the hidden landmines of paying for it. 

If you have a comment about this or any of my other posts, reach me at my email address: garyhoover2012 [at] gmail.com.