Washington – A surge in veterans using the GI Bill to pay for college is increasing delays for students in getting their money from the Department of Veterans Affairs.
For students attending colleges in the central United States, it’s been taking nearly eight weeks on average for a first-time applicant to start receiving VA college funds. That’s more than twice as long as it’s supposed to take, according to the VA’s standards.
The VA this week began taking what it called “extraordinary measures” to reduce the backlog at its St. Louis claims-processing center, including diverting all incoming calls to an office in Oklahoma for two weeks to free up 20 employees to process claims. St. Louis is the slowest of the VA’s four education claims-processing centers. The St. Louis center processes applications from Colorado and Wyoming.
“The number of claims coming in has been at all-time record highs,” a VA liaison officer said in a memo to college officials. “We appreciate your patience. We understand you take a lot of the heat from students when claims processing is slower than expected.”
VA education programs, which pay eligible veterans up to $1,034 a month while they’re attending school, are a key inducement for recruits. More than 500,000 veterans and eligible dependents use VA education benefits.
Nationwide, more than 118,000 VA education claims were waiting to be processed as of Feb. 4.
Large numbers of soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan to hometowns in the Midwest, coupled with larger education-benefits checks available to all veterans, are among the factors that Bill Fillman, the central area director for the Veterans Benefits Administration, suspects are increasing the workload in St. Louis.
