Carrie Wofford, the president of Veterans Education Success, an advocacy group that often lobbies Congress on GI Bill issues, told Military.com that Howard surely has issues with processing veteran benefits, but it’s a relatively small fish compared to a wide array of what she called fraudulent schools that SAAs have taken no action against.
“It would be a disgrace if VA were to cut off Howard for paperwork compliance but not do anything about the known fraudsters,” Wofford said. “VA and the D.C. SAA should help Howard figure out the paperwork issues and resolve it. Howard is arguably the most important historically Black college in the country and provides a great education. VA should be helping great schools and focusing any punishment on fraudsters.”
Will Hubbard, the vice president for veterans and military policy for Veterans Education Success, told Military.com that Howard simply doesn’t appear to have the useful “institutional” relationship with the military community or the VA. He said oftentimes the schools that are the best at paperwork are those that use predatory tactics to recruit veterans or set up non-accredited programs.
In 2018, the VA inspector general warned the department could waste $2.3 billion in payments to “ineligible colleges” through 2023. In the bulk of cases, the payments would go to for-profit universities or bogus schools. Howard is a private, not-for-profit school.
“There is no shortage of bad schools,” Hubbard said. “Some of the worst schools are the best at paperwork.”
Read the full story at Military.com here.