Military Education Support Programs

DANTES conducts a range of services including:

• Hosting training workshops
• Administering examinations, such as high school equivalency, licensure, and certification exams
• Providing interest and career assessments to servicemembers

DANTES sponsors a number of different examination programs to assist servicemembers to accomplish their educational goals. The three most common exams include:

College Level Examination Program (CLEP). CLEP includes a series of 34 general and subject tests, and these exams are accepted for credit by more than 2,900 universities across the country.

DANTES Subject Specialized Tests (DSST). DSST is a comprehensive series of 38 examinations in various college subject areas.

Excelsior College Exams (ECE). ECE examinations are designed to help servicemembers meet their specific college degree requirements. Today, they are accepted for college credit by over 900 universities across the country.

Academic Credit for Military Experience

The American Council on Education (ACE) and the Department of Defense (DoD) evaluate military occupational specialties and military training courses throughout the services and apply a credit value and field of study that is transferable to a transcript. A variety of documents are used for verification of training including DD-214s, Evaluation Reports and Course Completion Certificates.

Each service branch has a transcript service where servicemembers and veterans can request transcripts of military training and experiences. These include:

• U.S. Army. AARTS
• U.S. Navy. SMART
• U.S. Air Force. Community College of the Air Force. CCAF
• U.S. Marine Corps. SMART
• U.S. Coast Guard. U.S. Coast Guard Institute. CGI

For a GED transcript, contact the testing center issuing the equivalency diploma.

Servicemembers Opportunity College

The Servicemembers Opportunity College's Army Degree (SOCAD) consists of 1,800 accredited colleges networked together to provide degree programs regardless of stationing. Courses taken within the network are guaranteed to transfer without further evaluation, eliminating the need to retake classes that normally do not transfer from one college to the next.

Tuition Military Education Support Programs

Tuition Assistance. The Federal Tuition Assistance (FTA) program pays 100 percent of tuition costs up to $250 per credit with an academic yearly cap of $4,500. This amount is typically enough to pay for 18 credits per year. Applying to both undergraduate and graduate programs, either may be taken through distance learning or on-campus. Each service branch has its own application procedures:

Army. Access is through GoArmyEd

Navy. Attend education counseling at a Navy College Office before applying

Marines. Complete an orientation class before applying for the first time

Air Force. Apply through the Air Force Portal

Coast Guard. Apply through the Coast Guard Institute

The sister program of Tuition Assistance, called Tuition Assistance Top-Up, allows servicemembers to use GI Bill education benefits to pay for tuition costs not covered by TA.

Tuition Top-up. Tuition Top-Up is one of the military education support programs that must be used in conjunction with Tuition Assistance. For servicemember students whose tuition exceeds $250 per credit, or those reaching their yearly cap early in the academic year, they can use Top-Up. Under this program, the service branch pays the whole tuition amount and then bills the Veterans Administration (VA) for the amount not covered by Tuition Assistance.

The VA reimburses the service branch and converts the amount paid into days/months of entitlement and then reduces the servicemember's GI Bill entitlement by that amount. Because Tuition Assistance is paying much of the costs, GI Bill entitlements are used up at a slower rate.

For military members or veterans working towards a degree, using military education support programs can shorten the amount of time it normally takes to get a degree, save money and maximize GI Bill benefits.