May 22, 2025
For Immediate Release
Important New Analysis as Congress Undertakes Revisions to Title IV
New Report Analyzes GI Bill Lessons for Higher Education Oversight
Washington, DC – As the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions begins work on its Higher Education Act (HEA) amendments for the budget reconciliation bill, Veterans Education Success is releasing an analysis of lessons for HEA from the GI Bill context: “Lessons for Title IV from an Analysis of GI Bill Outcomes.”
“Drawing on a series of groundbreaking multiagency Census Bureau analyses and multiple case studies, this report demonstrates that, without robust quality assurance and oversight, federal postsecondary benefits are too easily lost to predatory and subpar providers,” explained Barmak Nassirian, Vice President for Higher Education Policy. “Because the GI Bill relies heavily on the Department of Education’s gatekeeping and institutional accountability functions, the findings of this report apply even more forcefully to the billions of dollars distributed by the Department of Education’s federal student aid programs.”
The analysis released today should be of assistance to Senate HELP Committee members as they re-envision higher education. Nassirian explained, “Regrettably, rather than strengthening the accountability and quality-assurance provisions of the Higher Education Act, the House bill contemplates the elimination of critical safeguards through the budget reconciliation process that is underway.”
Through an examination of findings from the unprecedented, recently concluded, seven-year interagency study of the entire population of enlisted post-9/11 GI Bill beneficiaries, utilizing hitherto unavailable data about their prior qualifications, their journey through the postsecondary system, and their IRS earnings after education, Veterans Education Success’s analysis released today explores the interagency study’s findings on the importance of quality and institutional integrity. Veterans Education Success’s analysis released today concludes that the interagency study is important not only for its findings on the GI Bill student outcomes for 2.7 million American enlisted veterans, but also for its implications for the much larger amounts of federal funding for federal student aid, which has never generated similar data.
The interagency study published six reports (available here) from a team of researchers from the Department of Veterans Affairs, U.S. Census Bureau, and American Institutes for Research (who were embedded as Special Sworn Status employees of the Census Bureau and followed all Census Bureau and IRS laws regarding proper handling of confidential information). The report drew on IRS earnings data, student records from the National Student Clearinghouse, and information from the U.S. Department of Defense (providing servicemembers’ records of military occupation and service as well as their academic aptitude and preparation test results upon their entry into military service), U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (multiple sources of records) and the U.S. Census Bureau (providing a plethora of data).
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Veterans Education Success is a nonpartisan organization whose mission is to advance higher education success for veterans, service members, and military families and to protect the integrity and promise of the GI Bill and other federal education programs. The organization offers free help, advice, and college and career counseling to servicemembers, veterans, and their survivors and families using federal education benefits and helps them participate in their democracy by engaging with policymakers. Veterans Education Success also provides non-partisan policy expertise to federal and state policymakers and conducts non-partisan research on issues of concern to student veterans.