Active duty, reserve, and veterans of the military have expressed concern over the tuition benefits of the Post 9/11 GI Bill in California–or rather, the lack thereof. California currently offers zero tuition to military personnel and family attending school with the Post 9/11 GI Bill due to the fact that they have flat enrollment fees for their in-state students instead of variable tuition.

The Post 9/11 GI Bill, dependent on tuition by state for a large portion of its benefits, does not have a clear-cut solution put aside for how to handle California’s method of educational expenses. NavyTimes reports California having recognized this issue; the state lawmakers have been trying to find a solution for the problem, but the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs has been discouraging immediate action in fear it will delay the Post 9/11 GI Bill.

This anomaly in California’s management of educational expenses was actually meant to be a benefit for students. In 1960, California declared it wanted to offer postsecondary education “tuition free,” so that students of the state could attend college simply by covering one standard fee. Unfortunately, with the legislation of the Post 9/11 GI Bill as it currently stands, the difference between the words “fee” and “tuition” have had a dramatic impact on thousands of dollars of benefits versus zero.

The VA Watchdog has a story about a member of the Marine Corps, Paul Miller, that qualified for music scholarships and planned on attending the San Francisco Conservatory of Music to study the clarinet–but with the loophole in the Post 9/11 GI Bill in California, even after all the generous scholarships were calculated into it, Miller would have to rely on student loans. The GI Bill would not benefit him.

McKeon, a Congressman of California, proposed on May 19, 2009 proposed the Veterans Educational Equality Act. The act tries to provide a benefit a military student attending a school in California by providing a flat grant of $6,586.51 (bill HR 2472).

Originally, the VA offered this $6,586.51 to cover the “fee” expenditure in California, but it could not be applied to tuition. For a student attending a government-funded California school, this worked fine, since those schools do not have tuition expenses. For students going to a private school in California, however, such as students attending Stanford University, the $6,586.51 covered the $1,000.00 fee cost of Stanford University, but did nothing for the remaining $37,000 in tuition.

The Veterans Educational Equality Act would allow the remaining $5,586.51 to be applied to a private school’s tuition rate. This means that instead of a student facing a bill of $37,000 at Stanford University, they would have  bill of $31,413.49. Still a heavy price to pay, but an improvement from the previous lack of benefits the state provided.

Congressman McKeon describes it as: “California’s prohibition on tuition was meant to hold costs down, not unfairly drive them up for our state’s veterans.”