Veterans & Service Members

AACRAO recognizes and honors the sacrifices these men and women have made and its members are proud to assist them and meet their educational needs. Veterans and students on active military duty and their families face special circumstances and challenges.

Changes in federal statute and executive actions have greatly promoted the expansion of services toward veterans and their families. Since the Post-9/11 GI Bill was passed in 2009, close to 1 million veterans, service members, and eligible dependents have taken advantage of the educational benefits available to them. With the passage of more recent legislation, such as the Forever GI Bill in 2017 and the Isakson Roe and THRIVE Acts in 2021, there will be significant changes to military education benefits over the coming years.

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AACRAO recently hosted a webinar to discuss the implementation of veteran legislation passed in December 2020, also known as the Johnny Isakson and David P. Roe Veterans Health Care and Benefits Improvement Act. This law will have a transformative effect on the mission of Education Service to provide ready access to, and timely and accurate delivery of, education benefits to Veterans, Service members, and their families, as well as further enable the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to empower GI Bill beneficiaries to achieve their vocational and career goals.

Other recent legislation introduced in both the House and Senate include important provisions to help ensure veterans can continue to receive their education benefits as well as technical corrections to the legislation passed last year.

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Solomon Amendment Update

Feb 4, 2021, 12:06 PM
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Summary : Congress recently approved legislation that includes language updating the Solomon Amendment to increase military recruiters' access to certain student information.
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Congress recently approved legislation that includes language updating the Solomon Amendment to increase military access to potential recruits. The Solomon Amendment is a federal law that requires institutions receiving certain federal agency funding to fulfill military recruitment requests for access to campus and for lists containing student recruiting information. It provides branches of the military access to student directory information which would have been denied them under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).

The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021, effective January 1, 2021, amends the student recruitment information entitled to military recruiters under the Solomon Amendment, adding "electronic mail addresses (which shall be the electronic mail addresses provided by the institution, if available)." Moving forward, colleges and universities that provide students with institutional email addresses must now include those email addresses in lists to military recruiters.

A Senate amendment to the bill proposed a provision Senate amendment contained a provision that would also require colleges and universities to provide student directory information within 60 days of the start of a school year or 60 days of the date of a recruiter's request as well as to provide lists of those students who do not return to the institution from the previous semester. However, that provision was not included in the final version of the legislation. Military recruiters are still not entitled to information regarding students no longer enrolled at the institution.

 
Michelle Mott
Categories :
  • Admissions and Recruitment
  • Advocacy
  • FERPA
  • Veterans and Service Members
Tags :
  • Federal relations
  • solomon amendment
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