APRIL 3, 2025 – Within the armed forces, a variety of educational benefits are available that allow service members to both improve themselves and make themselves more valuable to their service branch.
One example is the Military Tuition Assistance Program. The program is available to enlisted personnel, officers and warrant officers in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, Space Force and Coast Guard and is available only while personnel are still in service.
“The Army’s Tuition Assistance Program provides financial assistance for voluntary, off-duty civilian education programs in support of soldiers’ professional and personal self-development goals,” said Heather J. Hagan, an Army spokeswoman.
Through tuition assistance, service members can fund their civilian education with up to $250 per credit hour, not exceeding $4,500 annually. The program covers tuition and lab fees.
In order to take advantage of the program, service members should contact a service education counselor to discuss the application process. Tuition assistance can be used for accredited colleges and universities within the United States.
Service Community Colleges
The Air Force and Navy both offer their own community colleges, where enlisted service members can earn associate degrees at no cost during their off-duty time.
Chief Petty Officer Stacy Atkinsricks, a spokesperson with the U.S. Naval Community College, said the school offers 16 fully accredited, 100% online, fully funded associate degrees to sailors.
The school also offers 19 professional certificates by partnering with accredited universities and colleges. Coupled with the training the Navy already provides sailors, additional education makes for better service members and a stronger military, she said.
“You [get] a more well-rounded enlisted leader,” she said. “It’s building on those 21st-century skills leaders want service members to have — critical thinking, writing [and] researching.”
GI Bill
The GI Bill, which includes educational benefits typically used after military service concludes, can also be used while still on active duty.
Army Capt. Kristina Muller, an acquisition officer at the Army Test and Evaluation Command at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York. While in uniform, she used GI Bill benefits to attend Texas A&M University, where she earned a Master of Science degree in engineering management.
“When I originally applied to graduate schools, I found that I did not qualify for other forms of financial aid,” Muller said. “However, after eight years of service, I received 100% of the Post-9/11 GI Bill. The GI Bill provided me the opportunity to pursue my degree without monumental sacrifices to pay for school, which totaled $30,000.”
Without that assistance from the GI Bill, Muller said, it would have taken much longer to complete her degree and would have also left her in debt.
“The GI Bill also allowed me the flexibility in my career timeline to pursue a degree,” she said. “And it allowed me to take an opportunity that I saw to really buckle down and complete my degree.”
Muller said that achieving her degree has led to her being a more valuable officer, which means she can better serve those who work for her, the leaders above her and the entire Army as well.
“The Army is a profession, and as professionals, we are dedicated to continuously improving our units, our soldiers and ourselves,” she said. “The GI Bill allows hardworking service members to follow their interests, invest in themselves, and bring the knowledge to the workplace — whether during or after service — strengthening our nation.”
Investing in yourself, she said, allows service members to invest in the others around them, making everyone better at what they do.
“A hardworking, educated nation wins wars,” she said. “The acquisitions projects that succeed — the ones that are the best value to taxpayers and make our military more lethal — do so because they are well planned, staffed and managed. I’m committed to equipping service members with the tools they need to create overmatch. I went to school, and I’m staying in the Army because I’m committed to winning.”
Going ROTC
Students at civilian universities are the most typical applicants for attendance in a Reserve Officers’ Training Corps program. The Army, Navy and Air Force all host such programs at schools across the country. The Navy runs ROTC for both the Navy and Marine Corps, while the Air Force runs it for the Air Force and Space Force.
But it’s not just college freshmen who pursue an ROTC education. Across all branches of the armed forces, there are programs that allow enlisted service members to leave the military and pursue a civilian college education on an ROTC scholarship and then return later to their service as commissioned officers.
The Navy, for instance, offers the Seaman to Admiral-21 program, which allows sailors to leave the Navy for up to 36 months to attend college while still getting paid their enlisted salary. When they complete their degree, like other ROTC graduates, they earn a commission and return to the Navy as officers.
While these programs allow service members to improve themselves, they also allow the military to benefit by having more educated personnel.
“We understand that out in the ranks, out in the enlisted community, there are people with an immense amount of talent, an immense amount to offer, as far as leadership, as far as their academic power, their brain power, and we want to give them an opportunity to use that,” said Navy Lt. Cmdr. Mack Jamieson, Naval Service Training Command spokesman.
Service Academies
Some of the best institutions of higher learning in the United States are run by the military, including West Point, the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, and the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
All three schools are tough to get into, but the rewards they offer are often immeasurable. The academies are not just for recent high school graduates. Enlisted service members who qualify can attend, earn a degree, receive a commission and return to their service as officers.
Army Capt. William White, part of the admissions team at West Point, is responsible for guiding enlisted soldiers into the school.
At West Point, White said that about 5% of the students are prior enlisted. While not all those may be Army — some might have served in other services — West Point does reserve a total of 170 slots at the school each year for soldiers who have their commander’s endorsement. Half of those slots are for active-duty members, and half are for the National Guard and Army Reserve.
West Point has a long history of giving enlisted service members a chance to attend the school, White said.
“There’s an appetite since World War I to fill the Corps of Cadets with enlisted experience and to give enlisted personnel a path to commissioning,” White said. “We really look for soldier experience … We’re targeting soldier experience — you’ve gone on a [National Training Center] rotation, you’ve gone on deployment, you’ve been in the Army for one or two years.”
That experience, along with an academic aptitude to pass the rigors of West Point and a chain-of-command endorsement indicating leadership potential, are the three things needed to get a shot at an enlisted slot.
“If you kind of have all three of those things, you have good soldier experience, you have an academic aptitude … and your chain of command is endorsing you, we want you,” White said.
At West Point, he said those soldiers will learn to be better leaders and officers, in addition to earning a degree. Their presence there also benefits the other cadets around them, who are largely young men and women straight out of high school with no military or life experience.
“They bring the maturity, the ability to teach your peers, be a peer leader, be someone in the Corps of Cadets that understands the Army, understands what looks right in a leader, and what good leaders look like, and be able to kind of carry that as a banner for their classmates,” White said. “Some of the best officers that are produced by West Point, not all, but some of the best, are the ones that have been enlisted.”
West Point is academically and physically tough for the cadets who make the initial cut. However, for White, the biggest challenge he faces is getting enough enlisted soldiers to come to the school and prove they can do it.
“West Point struggles to get out to the enlisted force [about] what this opportunity is and that these slots are available,” he said. “I struggle really hard to get and fill my slots, and that’s a shame. West Point needs more soldiers. We need more soldiers in class.”
By C. Todd Lopez, DOD News