STICKER SHOCK
When it comes to benefiting from the Post-9/11 GI Bill, a handful of helicopter schools are in a league of their own.
A loophole in the 2009 legislation allows private companies that partner with public colleges and universities to charge as much as they want for flying lessons. While perfectly legal, it’s cost taxpayers millions of dollars without much evidence it’s improved veterans’ chances of getting their dream flying job, as some flight schools have asserted.
“We had cases where there were payments in excess of half a million dollars for (individual) flight training,” says Joe Wescott, legislative director of the National Association of State Approving Agencies (NASAA), which oversees college programs funded under the GI Bill. “Do you know how many oncologists I can train at (University of North Carolina) Chapel Hill for half a million dollars?”
In fiscal 2013, VA paid about $42 million in GI Bill benefits for 1,700 students enrolled in aviation programs at colleges and universities, Wescott says. The following year, VA shelled out nearly $80 million for 1,900 flying students.
It appears that as few as 10 schools were responsible for three quarters of all the GI Bill-related flight school expenses in 2014, adds John Kamin, assistant director of The American Legion’s Veterans Employment & Education Division. “So it’s not all across the board.”
Nonetheless, it’s important to find a way to bring helicopter flight training costs down before taxpayers lose patience.
“The biggest concern I have as a veteran and a graduate who used the GI Bill is that it raises the perception that veterans are gaming the system,” Kamin says.
Finding a fix people can agree upon, however, has proven perplexing.
Top flight The massive payments to helicopter schools first captured public attention in 2015 when the Los Angeles Times reported about expensive private-public flight training partnerships in Utah and Arizona. One reason for the eye-popping price tags: some helicopter programs switched from training students in piston-engine helicopters to more expensive jet-assist or turbine helicopters after the Post-9/11 GI Bill was passed, allowing these schools to charge VA more for fight instruction. The overall cost of training a helicopter pilot soared.
One of those companies defends the move to turbine helicopters as a way to improve students’ ability to get a job.
“We started offering training on more relevant aircraft because that is what they are going to be flying in the real world,” says Sean Reid of Upper Limit Aviation, which partnered with Southern Utah University (SUU) in Cedar City to offer flight training under the Post-9/11 GI Bill.
Other flight instructors say the switch to turbine helicopters not only was ill-advised, but put graduates at a disadvantage. “It’s like going to surgery school before you finish pre-med,” says Chris Bailey, chief pilot and CEO of Midwest Helicopter Academy, which trains pilots in partnership with Saint Louis University. In addition, some veterans ended up without enough experience flying piston-engine helicopters – the job most likely open to newly minted pilots. “Not only did they hurt the taxpayers,” Bailey says, “but they can hurt the graduates.”
Flight school officials point to other causes for the huge increase in helicopter training fees. Students and schools discovered veterans could flunk flight training, retake the course and build flying hours without harm to their GI Bill benefits. In addition, VA wouldn’t allow schools to give an incomplete to students who weren’t quite finished with flight training at the end of a semester.
“Being forced by regional VA to fail a student because of weather or maintenance was an incredibly difficult pill to swallow,” says Michael Mower, SUU’s executive director of aviation programs. It was likely the single biggest factor in driving up program costs and wasting veterans’ benefits, he adds.
SUU also worried that VA would pull GI Bill funding from all its academic programs because of a misunderstanding or sudden change in VA’s reading of its own regulations. “This compliance issue was incredibly difficult to deal with because of their constantly shifting interpretations of regulations,” Mower says.
SUU tried to dissuade VA without success amid accusations it was exploiting taxpayers. “We didn’t have a choice,” Mower says. “This was VA policy we had to follow.”
SUU officials also say VA wouldn’t allow them to steer students who clearly didn’t belong in the flying program toward other degrees to reduce safety risks and free up instructors to focus on other students. Mower cites the example of a student who failed the flying course five times. “Here I’ve got a student I couldn’t allow to fly – she’d kill herself,” he says. “I went and presented this to the VA (regional) office in Muskogee. And VA told me, ‘If they’ve got the benefits, deal with it.’” By the time she left the program, the student had exhausted her GI Bill benefits – without ever flying on her own.
VA rebuttal VA says its Muskogee office never told SUU it had to allow failing students to take flight training so long as they had GI Bill benefits. “Students that fail to meet a program’s published standards of attendance, conduct or progress should be terminated from a program, regardless of their eligibility for GI Bill benefits,” it stated in an email response to questions from The American Legion Magazine. “However, a student that meets these standards may receive benefits for retaking a required class if a failing grade was assigned for a previous attempt.”
In other words, unless a university has a policy that specifically calls for washing out unqualified students, it has to allow them to repeat the class.
VA also says that flight-training programs are permitted to give grades of incomplete “in accordance with their published institutional policies” when students can’t complete the course work by the end of the semester. And VA says it has never encountered a situation where students purposely flunked flight training classes so they could retake flying classes in order to build their flying hours.
However, VA has started scrutinizing public-college flight training programs. “In 2015, the department reviewed programs at more than 100 public institutions of higher learning and found approval issues with a substantial portion of them,” the department says. “VA worked closely with the schools and the various state approving agencies to bring non-compliant programs into compliance.”
Cap conCERNS SUU ended its partnership with Upper Limit Aviation last August after disagreements over program costs, among other issues, and will provide all training in-house, Mower says. It also changed academic policies that allowed students to fail three times before being booted from a program. Now they get one chance before SUU washes them out of flight training.
Meanwhile, Congress attempted to cap flight-training fees public colleges can receive under the GI Bill at approximately $22,000 a year – the same limit the Post-9/11 GI Bill imposes on flying programs at private universities. The legislation passed the House but stalled in the Senate.
Bailey, at Midwest Helicopter Academy, supports the limits. “It wouldn’t hurt to bump the cap to $25,000 a year – and apply it to all GI Bill flight training,” he says. His company has been able to provide GI Bill-funded flight training to aviation management students at Saint Louis under the $22,000 cap by keeping a tight rein on its costs.
“I am somebody from the private sector who has tried to do it right because I want to see these opportunities for veterans, who dream of becoming pilots, last into the future,” he says.
VA and NASAA also support a cap on GI Bill-funded flying tuition and fees at public colleges and universities. The American Legion hasn’t taken an official position on caps because of concerns about the unintended consequences of a one-size-fits-all approach.
“It’s hard to determine what that rate should be because some schools have more in-depth training and higher requirements,” Kamin says.
The Legion is monitoring the programs to see if SUU’s reform efforts and tighter VA scrutiny will bring flight training costs back in line.
“We believe that in the next six months we’re going to learn a lot about the changes that SUU and other institutions are making,” Kamin says. “It may result in the problem being resolved without legislation.”
But if these reform efforts don’t work, a cap on flight training expenses may be necessary. “In order for the GI Bill to succeed,” American Legion National Commander Charles E. Schmidt says, “every institution has to be a good steward of public dollars.”
Ken Olsen is a frequent contributor to The American Legion Magazine.