NDC Releases Ground-Breaking Study on Veteran Education Choices and Benefits
NDC Releases New White Paper: “Condescending Paternalism: The USDOE’s Unwarranted Limits on Veterans’ EARNED Education Benefits.”
Traditional universities are in decline but protected from competition by entrenched politicians’ biased restrictions on career colleges. At least one traditional university defender group conducted an unethical campaign against career colleges. Regardless of these headwinds, veterans continue to choose career colleges because they are a better fit for older veteran students and provide them the educational environments veterans want.
For the past 13 years, the traditional universities’ pocketed politicians waged an unrelenting attack on the very career colleges that are popular with military servicemembers and veterans.
NDC’s new white paper – “Condescending Paternalism: The USDOE’s Unwarranted Limits on Veterans’ EARNED Education Benefits” – makes four important points:
1. Traditional Universities are in Decline.
Traditional colleges and universities look a lot like lucrative businesses that generate their own form of profits, have scores of employees earning millions of dollars per year, and run highly profitable sports programs which in any other country or setting in the United States would be professional sports leagues. Further, these traditional universities fight tooth and nail to protect their entitled position, engaging heavily in partisan political campaigns (especially for sympathetic Democratic Members of Congress), and aggressively lobbying those same Members of Congress to protect their unique tax-exempt status for their exclusive and huge endowment income.
2. Military and Veteran Students Choose Innovative Career Colleges Over Traditional Universities. Veterans are Not Fooled; They are Not Dumb.
Veterans pick career colleges because of the ease and usefulness to their busy personal and professional lifestyles, an accepting student body, educational programs focused on real-world job skills, and a relative positive value, especially for military and veteran students.
3. Politicians Protect Traditional Higher Ed’s Advantages, Through Biased Regulations on Career Colleges.
The traditional universities’ compliant elected officials see the statistical decline of traditional universities as well as anyone, and therefore work to safeguard Traditional Higher Ed by applying restrictive limitations that apply to career colleges only. The “Gainful Employment” and “90/10” Rules are the most recent examples. Many traditional Higher universities would fail if subjected to the same regulatory red-tape.
4. “Regulatory Activism” Exposed with One Veterans Advocacy Group’s Unethical Campaign at the Department of Veterans Affairs.
While some advocacy groups argue they are there to “protect” apparently ignorant and naïve military and veteran students from so-called deceptive career colleges, their alliance with biased bureaucrats and similarly protectionist organizations perpetuates an attitude of condescending paternalism towards veteran students. Mostly backed by one wealthy funder, one advocacy group went so far as to engage in unethical practices at the VA.
NDC is working with the VA, Department of Education, Congress, and other veteran organizations to protect veterans’ rights to spend their earned educational benefits as they best see fit.
