Delays in GI Bill processing due to insufficient staffing in the Veterans Affairs office on the WSU Pullman campus are leaving WSU Vancouver veterans with outstanding tuition balances and other financial stressors.
Besides funding tuition, the GI Bill also provides a stipend that helps fund housing and books. Like other students at WSU Vancouver, most veterans apply for funding given out by the state and other entities to help with their cost of living while in school. In the case of veteran students, funding from grants is held until their GI Bill is processed through a slow-moving system.
“Instead of doing more with less, we should be improving our processes and trying to improve our staffing capacity.” – Penny Martinez
The Veterans and Military Affiliated Student Services manager in Pullman, Penny Martinez, oversees the needs of over 1,100 military-affiliated students across multiple WSU campuses, despite the recommended standard of one staff member for every 200 students. Her office requested more staff as early as 2007 and was not given an additional staff member until 2022.
“You have the school, who are struggling to maintain staffing. They may not have a budget that can afford my office of four people, and so my position has been one person for years,” Martinez said.
Veterans Coordinator Jaylene Wecks oversees collecting all documentation from veterans after certifying their classes with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and informing them of their benefits and opportunities.
Wecks said she must certify classes after registration and again after the deadline to add or drop classes. Thus, WSU Vancouver cannot submit the veterans’ full tuition cost to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs until after the third week of the semester (when the add-drop period is over) and an accurate tuition amount can be finalized.
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs processes nationwide tuition requests based on the order they are sent in. This Means WSU Vancouver student veterans must wait until after the third week of classes to get reimbursed — one veteran student’s documentation and payments could be completed much earlier than others and refunded much sooner.
The process, known as dual certification, is new to the WSU Veterans Affairs department as of spring 2022, making it harder on an already overwhelmed staff, as Martinez explained. She is also anticipating an increase in veteran enrollments within the next year.
According to the Student Services Financial Office, after veteran students’ tuition and fees were submitted to the Veterans Affairs department, they received an email that their GI Bill had been processed towards their tuition charges in September. However, veteran students still did not receive any of their grant money and were left with an overdue balance.
Kathleen Botello, a sophomore majoring in biology, served in the U.S. Navy for five years and spent one year in the reserves. She is one of the veterans at WSU Vancouver who experienced issues with the processing of her GI Bill.
“Last year it went through so quickly, I didn’t have any issues. But this year, trying to pay for school supplies and all my books, that would have been the money I would have used to pay for [those materials]. I had to pull money from my other funds, like groceries, to pay for school supplies,” Botello said.
Martinez said if there are any changes she could make to fix these issues, a new digitized system to keep track of students using veterans benefits in real-time would remove 30 to 45 days of processing time.
“Instead of doing more with less, we should be improving our processes and trying to improve our staffing capacity,” Martinez said.
Until corrections are made to the pre-existing GI Bill processing system at WSU, veteran students using benefits can expect the long delay times to continue. If you are a veteran student needing assistance, contact Wecks in the Student Services Building at WSU Vancouver.
“I’m here to answer questions and be a resource and help, so if someone is struggling, I do want to talk to them. Even outside my drop-in hours, I will be happy to make appointments with people,” Wecks said.
Aaron is a freshman studying earth and environmental science at WSU Vancouver.