At first encounter, Kyle Williams seems like the typical success story among 3,000 students who will advance from Sierra College this year. An articulate and ambitious young man, Kyle has accrued 60 college credits with a grade point average of 3.65 in only 18 months at Sierra. Earning admission to UC Davis starting in January, his longer term goals are to complete a bachelor’s degree in political science and then law school.

Upon closer examination, however, Kyle’s road to success has been a lot longer than most. Before 2002, the world seemed Kyle’s oyster. At Roseville’s Oakmont High, he started as goalie on the varsity water polo team as a sophomore and earned  all-American recognition by his senior year  He was invited to Stanford’s elite water polo training camp, and a Division 1 full-ride scholarship was a likelihood, especially considering his A-minus GPA. His long term goal of going into law was already established.

However, in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, Kyle decided that he had more important things to do than to play college water polo, and so he enlisted in the Marines. Over the next four years, he served two years in combat in Iraq as a fire team leader of a counter terrorism unit including suffering injuries in a firefight. He was awarded the Navy Commendation Medal and a Presidential Unit Citation.

Now, like millions of veterans before him, Kyle is back in college under the GI Bill seeking to make his place in the world.  As of January, 2007, more than 1.6 million Americans have served in the military in Iraq and Afghanistan. Of those, over 250 are enrolled as students at Sierra.

Sierra is gaining a reputation among veterans as a good place to start a college career, because it is one of the few colleges which employs a full-time veteran’s counselor. Sierra’s veteran’s counselor is Catherine Morris, who is herself both a community college graduate (Sacramento City College) and a former Marine. Nearing thirty and with no college background, she spent a focused two weeks studying educational options at the career center of San Joaquin Delta College, and she made the conscious decision that counseling students was her destiny. So she parlayed her Sac City education into a Bachelors in Sociology and a Masters in Career and Educational Counseling from Sac State.

The problems confronting veterans returning to school can be daunting.  If wounded in combat, they must cope with whatever physical disability they are left with.  Furthermore, the American Medical Association reports that 35% of Iraq veterans have already sought help for mental health concerns.  Homeless and suicide rates are far higher among veterans than among the population at large.  They may face less than cordial campus relationships with people who fail to distinguish their own views of war policy from those who simply volunteered to serve.  And, perhaps most difficult, they must seek to put their combat experiences behind them and move forward in the civilian world.

Some actually tell Catherine that coming back to try to succeed in college is more frightening than going into combat. Others, including Kyle, find it easier. He says that “any other job than being a soldier is a better paying, easier job.”

Among the more difficult problems facing veterans is working their way through the maze of regulations and paperwork associated with the benefits they have earned under the Montgomery GI Bill of 1985.  With the modern GI bill, recruits must agree in advance to have their service pay reduced by $100 per month in order to be eligible for benefits after service. This is seen by many primarily as a recruiting tool rather than as an educational benefit. Moreover, after their service, only 8 per cent of veterans over the last decade have used their benefit in full and thirty per cent failed to use it at all. The system leaves large numbers of veterans who feel cheated by the whole process.

The current GI Bill is a pale imitation of the famous program that followed World War II.  Officially called the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, the GI Bill provided full tuition, a living stipend, and other benefits. Usually regarded as one of the most transforming programs in our nation’s history, the 1944 GI Bill is often credited with helping to create the great American middle class.  More than 10 million WWII vets went to college under the GI bill including 67,000 physicians, 91,000 scientists, 238,000 teachers, and 450,000 engineers. The total cost of the program in 2007 dollars was $50 billion, and it has been estimated that the long term return to the U.S. economy was $350 billion, or a 700 % return on investment. 

We may be benefiting from an equal or greater return on investment today, but the investment level is far lower. Catherine says, not entirely in jest, “Today you need your Ph.D. before you get your GI Bill because there are so many barriers.”

Every veteran must submit a Veterans Education Plan before receiving benefits. Only one major course of study can be pursued, so that individuals who want or need to take double majors must first take all courses for one before starting the other. Some recommended or advisory courses are not covered, and a course taken prior to military service may not be repeated, no matter how long in the past the course was taken.  Catherine describes it as “a system of distrust.”

Paying for their college education is a significant problem for most students, but there are some specific hurdles facing veterans. The maximum monthly GI benefit is around $1200 which can be minimally adequate to support a community college education but is totally inadequate for public or private universities. GI benefits are paid on a monthly basis, but they don’t begin for at least eight weeks after the start of school. Payments are pro-rated in months when school is not in session the entire month. Some veterans have been denied additional financial aid because of the income level they attained while serving, even though they are no longer earning those dollars. In Kyle Williams’ case, he is able to break even at Sierra, but he expects to have to borrow a net $20,000 per year to pursue his higher education at UC Davis.

Catherine’s job is to guide Sierra’s vets through their time on campus as best she can. Sierra’s reputation as a college where veterans can come and expect a real helping hand is growing because of her. She has received many inquiries from Marines at Camp Pendleton who have been referred by other Sierra students. Catherine routinely schedules 10 counseling appointments a day for up to an hour each.

“I love my job,” she says, “because I get to work with these veterans. They are such dedicated, hard-working people who worked to give something and are now seeking to make something of their lives.”

Bill Martin is a Sierra College Trustee. He can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it