College Scholarships and Awards: College Funding in Exchange for Service

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In these days of the all-volunteer military, you've probably seen recruitment ads on television that tout the benefits of the Montgomery GI Bill. Or, if you live in a major city, you'll surely have noticed the red jackets of AmeriCorps, those primarily college-aged nonstudents who give up a year of their time to community service in communities all over the country in exchange for limited tuition assistance.

While these are two of the more visible examples of college tuition assistance available in exchange for the completion of a public service commitment, they're not the only two. In all the examples in this article, either the federal or state government pays for all or a part of your education, while you give a period of service as a payback. Clearly, from the government's position, this is a winning strategy — it gives higher education to people who otherwise might do without and gets services in exchange. But for many people who enroll in these programs, it also helps to solve what otherwise might be an unsolvable problem: how to pay for the education they need in order to begin the career they want.

You and your child should ponder a few points before embarking on this road toward financing your student's education:

• Your student may have very little control over what type of service he does and where he does it. While the military, the Public Health Service, and AmeriCorps try very hard to put people where they want to be, not everyone can play in the Marine Corps Band, fly fighter jets, or be in the Army Corps of Engineers.
• Once your student actually begins to receive money, his window to back out of the deal closes quickly. Although the various branches of the service allow a freshman ROTC scholarship student to cancel his scholarship, once you move beyond that first year, your child has pretty much committed to fulfilling his military service obligation. The same holds true for loans with service obligations from the Public Health Service; although you can buy out of your service period, the cost far exceeds the actual amount you received.
• The amount of money your student receives may not be enough to pay for the education he wants. Benefits from the Montgomery GI Bill generally pay for a four-year education at a public college or university, but you'll come up short if your child's greatest desire is to attend a private four-year college. Even with additional benefits available, you still won't have enough, and you'll have to make up the difference, either through savings, current earnings, or loans.

If you're still game even after the warning, read on and find out more about your options.

Marching In The Military

The military provides one of the best bargains around in educational funding. This is true whether your child enlists in a branch of the military or any state National Guard right out of high school, enrolls in the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) at her college, or is fortunate enough to obtain a nomination to a military service academy (West Point, U.S. Naval Academy, U.S. Coast Guard Academy, U.S. Air Force Academy, or the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy). In exchange for either active or reserve service in one of the four branches of the military or the merchant marine, your child will receive enough funding from the government to provide at least a bare-bones postsecondary education. In many cases, the educations provided by the military are some of the finest available.