Full time tuition at Columbia runs around $52k/yr. Their Yellow Ribbon matching works out to about $8k/yr. So they're raking in a nearly guaranteed $44k/yr from the Federal government for every vet they enroll.
GS isn't some benevolent social program, they see the grant dollars and they take them. They've been experts at this for a long, long time.
The cynical part is that they use completely different diplomas, transcript codes and CEEB codes for the GS program. This is non-standard, where most other universities fully integrate their veteran and re-entry students across the board. (including financial aid)
> So they're raking in a nearly guaranteed $44k/yr from the Federal government for every vet they enroll.
Not exactly. The GI bill doesn't pay anywhere near $44k for New York State. The federal government is not picking up the tab.
I acknowledged the dearth of financial aid in my post, and that's something that they're desperately working on. GS is not as well endowed, which would be the solution to this. If you want to be cynical, fine, but the question of how much money GS has is different from how they're actually spending it.
This is the downside of being a separate school, yes, though with the aforementioned very notable exception of the endowment issue, GS students and faculty overwhelmingly favor this model.
In any case, the topic of this conversation was prisoners and convicts, not veterans. I merely mentioned them because they're a large part of GS and GS has a history of accepting disonorably discharged veterans, which is tantamount to convict status.
$20k GI bill + $8k yellow ribbon + $3k/mo living allowance ($24k for 8 months or $36k for 12 months).
So that's $52k/yr to $64k/yr before you start adding in stuff like Pell grants.
Do I support federal dollars funding college education for vets? Yes, absolutely. Do I think this is some great act of benevolence by Columbia? No. Is that view reinforced by the simple fact that they use different diplomas, transcripts and CEEB codes for veterans? Certainly. Do I buy that Columbia's screwy internal administrative structure is a valid reason for this? Definitely not.
GS isn't some benevolent social program, they see the grant dollars and they take them. They've been experts at this for a long, long time.
The cynical part is that they use completely different diplomas, transcript codes and CEEB codes for the GS program. This is non-standard, where most other universities fully integrate their veteran and re-entry students across the board. (including financial aid)