Military Spouse Tuition Program Makes a Quick Exit

Recently a program was instituted in the military to help pay tuition costs for the spouses of members who were on active duty and the spouses of reservists who had been called to active duty. The program, called MyCAA, or Money for the Military Spouse Career Advancement Accounts Program, paid $6,000 to military spouses to cover tuition in college or trade schools, or other expenses related to attending these schools. By February 136,000 military spouses had applied for the program and 98,000 had already received benefits.

The ability of certain parts of the military to plan a program properly has to be in question. $61 million was budgeted for in the initial year of the program, and $65 million was requested in the current fiscal year. A quick calculation shows that the military planners who implemented this program were expecting about 10,000 students per year. When the average number of application rose to 10,000 per month (that’s month, not year) they must have realized the program was in trouble. In January the word must have gotten out on this program and the number of applications rose to 70,000 in that month alone.

At that point it was clear that this program was going to exceed its allotted budget by some 20 to 30 times and the cost would be probably over $1 billion, not the $65 million expected. So it appears that whatever department of the Pentagon responsible for this program panicked. They just abruptly shut the program off. So many people who were already enrolled in the program and enrolled in school suddenly learned that they were not going to receive the $6,000 that they had been promised and that they expected and planned for. Some of these people said they learned about the decision by surfing in facebook since the military did not contact people individually or collectively to tell them about the program’s demise, they just cut it off.

Outraged, a number of military personnel and spouses contacted their congressional representatives, and many of these asked the Pentagon what was going on. In fact Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was questioned about this by the defense subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee. He stated that cutting the program off so quickly without notice was a mistake. Many agreed that the Pentagon instead should have approached the Congress about the problem and tried to find a solution. The idea of helping military spouses seems to have support and is not considered to be some sort of boondoggle.

It appears these efforts to challenge the Pentagon’s decision in this matter have paid off to a certain extent. People who had been accepted into the program and who had not been paid are now being paid. No new applications are being accepted, however.

For the U.S. government this is a small program. If, however, this program is even remotely indicative of how well the government can plan and execute programs, one wonders what will occur when the huge heath care program recently forced through by the Democrats in Congress goes into effect. Although the two situations are very different, it is hard to be optimistic.