College, Career, Life

Tying yellow ribbon around trees has been a national symbol paying tribute to fallen soldiers and honoring the ones on the front lines in the war on terror. While the ribbons are such a simple gesture, unfortunately, the financial aid funding initiative for veterans named in honor of that act is the opposite – a frustratingly complex process that has prospective students and administrators facing a whole different battle.

SBBCollege is one of the private California colleges approved for The Yellow Ribbon Bill, a provision of the new Post-9/11 GI Bill which became effective on August 1, 2009. The Yellow Ribbon program funds tuition expenses for veterans eligible for the Post-9/11 GI Bill at the 100 percent benefit level (this includes those who served at least 36 months on active duty or served 30 continuous days and were discharged due to service-related injury).

The Yellow Ribbon program authorizes the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to pay the actual tuition and fees charged by a university up to the maximum in-state tuition and fees charged by the most expensive public university in the state.

This means that benefits for a private school like SBBCollege cannot exceed the highest public in-state undergraduate tuition rate. So what happens when the highest public in-state undergraduate tuition is … nothing?

As part of its regulation on the Yellow Ribbon Bill, the VA determined that it would set separate state maximums for tuition and fees instead of a combined total. But in California, public schools have traditionally charged no “tuition” but high “fees.” This means that a student attending a private school in California would receive much less of a tuition benefit under the Post 9/11 GI Bill Yellow Ribbon program than a student at a private school in another state.

The California base tuition benefit listed by the VA recently dropped to zero. This means that if the updated number stands, veterans could apply $0 toward private college tuition in California. They could apply up to $6,586.54 per term toward their private college fees, but most private colleges structure their costs so they’re tuition-heavy, not fee-heavy. The maximum allowance at SBBCollege is up to $4,000 per student.

For more information on the Yellow Ribbon Bill at SBBCollege, contact us today.

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