Progress in Educating Veterans in the 21st Century

This book reviews information about the challenges that veterans face when they are in college. Some of this information is little known. As all of the information is reviewed, many ways are discussed about how higher education has helped veterans with these challenges. While acknowledging the progress in veterans education over the past three years, the book also calls attention to some difficulties of veterans in college that some professors and college administrators might not know about but can help eliminate. After reviewing these challenges in detail, solutions to these challenges are discussed how higher education can give veterans a better chance of getting a degree. The book should be informative to professors and college administrators who want to know how else they may facilitate veterans who study at their institution.

Three authors have spent all or nearly all of their professional lives teaching at the college level. Two authors (Herrmann and Hopkins) are emeriti professors from Indiana State University. One author has also had a long career in college teaching at Milligan College and is not far from retirement (Allen). One author (Wilson) retired from the military after almost 21 years of service and recently obtained a BA and MA in Linguistics at Indiana State University. All four authors have first hand experience with the problems discussed here. Three of the authors provided, as part of their professional duties, advice to veterans about the problems they encountered in higher education. Each author was a veteran when he obtained a college degree after serving in the military. The first author is a Marine Corps Vietnam veteran; the second author is a WWII veteran of the 44th Infantry Division, Seventh Army; the third author is a Marine Corps veteran with 16 years of service overseas; and the fourth author is an Army Vietnam veteran. All of the authors obtained part of their education with the support of the GI Bill.