Robert Rahni ⋅ White Plains, NY Fordham University ⋅ 13 years experience

Hi Jamell,

Thank you for your service and posing this thoughtful question.

Should you meet at least a 20% service connected disability per the Department of Veteran Affairs, you may wish to investigate applying for CH 31 Vocational Rehabilitation.

While not a GI BILL educational benefit- CH 31 unlike CH 33 Post 9/11 is categorized as a VA educational benefit, where if granted will cover tuition/fees in full. There is also a monthly subsidence allowance which should you have exhausted CH 33 in its entirety will be markedly less per month. All books/supplies are paid for and CH 31 even provides dental care which most are not aware.

I should be very clear here- there are no guarantees even if the required 20% disability rating is met, CH 31 will automatically be granted, but it’s definitely something worth submitting an application for via vets.gov and see where the pieces may fall.

There are also a number of federal, state and mixture of institutional merit and endowed financial aid that I suggest you look into if you haven’t done so already. Most true military friendly institutions of higher learning have budgeted for a merit based aid specific to military affiliated students who have exhausted their GI BILL or at the very least have smaller endowed packages to help offset the completion of their degree. Every little bit truly does help!

Feel free to message me directly with any further questions. I’d be happy to schedule a good time to hop on a call if you’d like as well.

Best,
Robert

Konstantin Cherco ⋅ New York, NY American Corporate Partners ⋅ 3 years experience

Jamell,

Thank you for your question! There are options out there for you once you have used your GI Bill. Check out this article which given a nice overview of what is available:

https://themilitarywallet.com/run-out-of-gi-bill-benefits/

Also, depending on the industry you are looking to enter, there are a lot of free training options out there. For instance, you can look at programs like this:

https://onward2opportunity-vctp.org/

I know that they won't help you pay for your current degree but you could supplement your education for free. I hope some of these are helpful!

Best Regards,
Konstnatin