When the U.S. Marine Corps announced that it was cutting its tuition assistance program as a result of “sequestration,” Cpt. Martin Cawdery sat down with his wife to go over their monthly budget to see if he could afford to continue his master’s degree studies at Webster University.
Fortunately, Webster University developed a Military Tuition Assistance Protection (MTAP) plan before Cawdery had to make any changes.
Among other things, the MTAP plan offers service members a grant covering up to $250 per credit hour to replace the suspended tuition assistance funds, according to the university.
“I was elated because I really wanted to continue my education, but we were going to have to make some significant cuts in our savings and just cut back on doing things with my family, whether dinner or a movie,” said Cawdery, who had been relying upon the tuition assistance program for the past year and a half, using it to the maximum at $4,500 per year.
“I could make some adjustments within my budget and still squeak it out,” said Cawdery, who is 35. “But the young enlisted folks, there’s no way. They would either have to quit school or finance it through student loans or would have to tap into their G.I. Bill.”
Cawdery said some service members may be reluctant to use their G.I. Bill because the post 9/11 G.I. Bill is transferrable to dependents.
Webster University is one of at least a handful of universities that have stepped up to offer enlisted members all or some of the tuition assistance they lost as a result of cuts to the Department of Defense. The cuts were part of $85 billion in federal cuts that went into effect March 1 as a result of “sequestration,” the term used for the across-the-board cuts that were imposed because of Congress’s 2011 failure to reach a $1.2 trillion deficit reduction deal.
