Although many of them have faced far more danger and stress than they will on an average school day, college is not easy for most veterans.
Student veterans face different challenges than their younger counterparts who are fresh out of high school and have a different perspective on college.
“We have 925 veterans on campus this semester, but those are only the ones we know of,” said Roger Perkins, director of Veterans Support.
Not all student veterans register with Veterans Support.
“That is something we are really trying to work on,” Perkins said. “Most student veterans that aren’t registered with us are [not registered] because they don’t know or don’t think that they are student veteran[s].”
Although veterans are known for working and fighting hard, many of them drop out of college before graduating.
“The prevalent view is that student veterans do better than non-student veterans because they’re older, more mature, they’re used to work and they’re more focused,” Perkins said. “However, the dropout rate for student veterans is about 25 percent higher than for any other category of student, and we’re not sure why.”
Still, many student veterans do well academically.
“The student veterans that we have [have] a GPA from average a 3.0. We don’t have a GPA for all of them because a lot of veterans come into college with credits already but don’t have a U GPA,” Perkins said.
It seems that veterans take college more seriously than their non-military counterparts, who are more disposed to see college as a social experience. Veterans are more likely to see it as a step or process. Andrea Bryant, a freshman in medical laboratory science, was a master-at-arms in the U.S. Navy and left the service as a petty officer second class.
“Master-at-arms is a broad field, but I mainly did security on security boats,” Bryant said.
Bryant switched jobs several times prior to settling on a master-at-arms.
“When I joined, I was on a gunner’s mate contract. After 11 months of working out before boot camp, I decided to switch to an Explosive Ordinance Disposal (EOD) contract. After boot camp, in dive prep, I realized quickly that it wasn’t for me and switched to master-at-arms,” Bryant said.
Bryant spent most of her time in the Navy at the submarine base in Bangor, Wash., but she did serve 14 months in Bahrain. She has enjoyed her experience as a student veteran at the U so far and was pleased about how painless the process has been.
“So far it’s been very positive. I was in Bahrain up until June 20, so all the things I had to do to prepare to go to school here was very easy. I was able to do it all online and take a month leave to attend orientation. Getting residency paperwork and getting my GI Bill ready was all really easy. I’ve been really impressed with the programs here so far,” she said.