December 16, 2025
Mr. William G. Fitzhugh
Performing the Duties of Assistant Secretary of War for Manpower and Reserve Affairs
U.S. Department of War
4000 Defense Pentagon, Washington, DC 20301
via email
Re: Military-Connected Student Deserve Better Federal College Search Tools
Dear Mr. Fitzhugh,
As you know, service members, veterans, and their families represent a unique group of prospective students who often approach higher education without the same support systems or experience as traditional students. Many are first-generation students navigating an unfamiliar, complex process, making clear, trustworthy information imperative.
The College Scorecard, GI Bill Comparison Tool, and TA DECIDE give prospective students access to federal data on costs, quality, and outcomes. They also help counter the growing influence of deceptive private sites that exist to capture personal data rather than inform. These federal tools were created in response to a long history of schools preying on veterans and service members, using deceptive marketing and false promises to exploit access to federal benefits.
Our new report, “Evaluation of Federal College Search Tools for Veterans, Service Members, and their Families,” examines what federal college choice tools are doing well and where they are falling short. It offers practical recommendations to strengthen data accuracy, timeliness, and coordination across agencies. The goal is not to criticize what exists, but to make it better and more user-friendly. With stronger coordination among the Departments of Education (ED), Veterans Affairs (VA), and War (DOW), these tools can deliver the reliable information that military-connected students deserve.
Suggestions for Improving TA DECIDE to Ensure It Meets Its Promise for Military-Connected Students
The TA DECIDE tool was created to support service members as they navigate their options under DOW’s voluntary education program for active duty service members. However, there are ways to improve the tool’s overall mission-effectiveness:
- Oversight Alignment. VA already posts caution flags on the GI Bill Comparison Tool when a school is under investigation or noncompliant, but those flags are not mirrored on TA DECIDE, allowing schools to appear “clean” despite serious warnings and misleading service members. DOW should require that any action triggering a caution flag on the GI Bill Comparison Tool be displayed on TA DECIDE at the same time.
- Complaint Visibility. Complaint history is one of the clearest measures of the student experience, yet TA DECIDE presents VA complaint data differently, producing ambiguous views of the same school. DOW should align TA DECIDE with the GI Bill Comparison Tool by adopting the same complaint categories, reporting periods, and caution flag triggers.
- Enforcement Integration. TA DECIDE operates largely in isolation from ED and VA, causing accreditation sanctions, financial warnings such as Heightened Cash Monitoring, and other enforcement actions to be omitted or delayed, as illustrated by the UAGC case. DOW should establish a formal data sharing agreement with ED and VA to ensure all enforcement and oversight actions are transmitted to TA DECIDE immediately.
- Equal Transparency. TA DECIDE’s omissions create unequal protection, where veterans receive warnings, disclosures, and earnings data that service members using Tuition Assistance do not, despite pursuing the same goal. DOW should align TA DECIDE with the GI Bill Comparison Tool, integrate cross agency data, and incorporate military and veteran specific outcome data so service members receive the same level of transparency veterans expect.
Addressing these shortcomings will enable service members to make informed decisions, thereby improving training quality in support of the Department’s overall mission.
Overarching Recommendations Across the Agencies
As federal agencies continue to improve college choice tools, clearer coordination and stronger data sharing are necessary to ensure those tools present accurate and complete information to military-connected students, including the following:
- Interagency Data Integration. All three tools should establish a pathway toward full data integration or be directly linked, beginning with ED and VA, including automatic sharing of metrics between ED’s College Scorecard and VA’s GI Bill Comparison Tool and use of a shared data interface drawing from verified federal sources.
- NCES Data Gaps. NCES lacks routine access to personally identifiable data and relies on surveys that capture benefit use only during the survey year, do not capture whether a veteran ever used benefits, and do not identify which GI Bill benefit was used.
- Veteran Outcome Reporting. To close data gaps, ED and VA should ensure institutions report outcomes specific to military and veteran students, display those results alongside civilian data in federal tools, and move the veteran status question earlier in the FAFSA skip pattern.
- Lead Generator Disclosure. A uniform federal requirement should mandate disclosure of financial relationships between lead generators and institutions, or allow funding agencies to prohibit participation by institutions that recruit through non-disclosing lead generators.
Taken together, these steps would make the tools more reliable and provide clearer transparency for service members, veterans, and their families deciding where to use their hard earned benefits.
Conclusion
The federal government has made steady progress in helping veterans, service members, and their families find reliable information about where to use their education benefits, with the College Scorecard, GI Bill Comparison Tool, and TA DECIDE reflecting a genuine effort to promote transparency and accountability.
The challenge is not resources but coordination, as existing data should be shared and presented consistently across agencies so these tools operate as a unified, reliable system. The framework is already in place, and what remains is a focused commitment to deliver on the promise of transparency that veterans and their families deserve.
If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out by phone or email at 703-379-3822 or will@vetsedsuccess.org.
Sincerely,
William Hubbard
Vice President for Veterans & Military Policy