GI Bill losing power to cover college costs

FAIRFAX, Va. – Marc Edgerly and his father, Carl, both joined the Army as young men, served during wartime and eventually decided that college, not a full-time military career, was what they wanted. But the cost they shouldered for that education is dramatically different.

The GI Bill covered all of Carl Edgerly’s college expenses in the mid-1970s. His son, however, expects that even with the maximum $1,075 in monthly GI Bill benefits, he will be saddled with $50,000 in student loans when he graduates from George Mason University.

“The total amount of the GI Bill comes nowhere close to what I actually need for college,” said Marc Edgerly, 26, who is in his second year at the suburban Washington school. “After five years of college, it is not going to work.”

As the Edgerlys prove, it’s not your father’s GI Bill anymore.

The federal program that once covered nearly the entire cost of a veteran’s college expenses continues to fall further behind the soaring price of higher education.

Despite several attempts by Congress to boost benefits in past decades, the gap has grown so large that many veterans are forced to take out sizable student loans.

The maximum GI Bill amount a currently enrolled veteran who served on active duty can qualify for during a college career is roughly $38,700. But for many students, that is not nearly enough to pay for tuition, room, board and books. And the GI Bill covers only four years of school, leaving veterans on their own if they take longer to graduate.

The average cost of one year’s tuition, room and board at four-year public institutions in 2006-07 was $12,796, according to the College Board. For private schools, the one-year cost was $30,367. Tuition and fees at all schools have risen 35 percent in the past five years, while the highest GI Bill monthly payout has increased only 20 percent since 2002.

Big student loans are not uncommon among college students in general; the average graduate now leaves school with $19,000 in loans.

Congress has boosted the GI benefit several times since its inception – the last a $9 billion, 10-year increase passed in 2001 that even then was criticized as too small to keep up with soaring costs.

Some lawmakers want to try again. A bill by Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., a former Marine and Navy secretary, would pay the entire tuition, room and board of veterans and provide them with a monthly stipend of $1,000. The expanded benefit would be available to all members of the military who served after Sept. 11, 2001.