It would be hard to find a military record more impressive than that of Mauro Mujica-Parodi III. Commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps after graduating from Georgetown University, he was assigned to the 3rd Battalion of the 7th Marine Regiment. As an infantry officer, he was deployed twice to Ramadi, Iraq, where he directed and supervised 50 Marines, 100 Iraqi police, and more than 100 Iraqi soldiers in increasing security and improving infrastructure. In March of 2008, with the rank of captain, he left active duty – he remains on Inactive Reserve status – with the intent to become a student of business. “I knew fairly early on that I wanted to go to business school,” he said. “I saw the military and civilian life as two different lives. I didn’t realize quite how much I would be able to leverage my military experience into a civilian career.”

The timing was off, however; when he was deactivated, it would be nearly a year before the next round of fall applications were considered at business schools. Mujica-Parodi decided to research schools, get his application materials together, and gain valuable work experience. Given his leadership role in Iraq, he didn’t expect much trouble in finding work – but he was surprised: In an already slow economy, as it turned out, he wasn’t in demand. “It was extremely difficult for me to get a job,” he said. “Extremely difficult. I had a lot of people saying, ‘Thank you for your service.’ But I was an infantry officer, and trying to explain that skill set to anyone else is a little difficult … At the end of the day – one, I probably didn’t communicate as well as I could have the benefits of having an infantry background or having a military background; and two, I didn’t feel like it was falling on receptive ears.”

The Unemployment Problem

Mujica-Parodi’s dilemma is far from unique among veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. The unemployment rate for returning veterans has consistently lagged behind that of civilians. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 11.5 percent of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans were unemployed, compared to the 9.5 percent overall national rate. Worse yet, 12.5 percent of new veterans, during the first six months of 2010, were unemployed. The worst-hit veterans have been Reserve and National Guardsmen, who often leave behind civilian jobs when they deploy: Their unemployment rate has more than quadrupled since 2007.

Staff Sgt. Ronald Clarke, of the 2nd Recruiting Brigade, signs up at the Redstone Education Center in Alabama to talk to a counselor about the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill. U.S. Army photo by Skip Vaughn.

The problem is alarming, and Tim Embree, legislative associate for the nonprofit Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), has spent much of the past few years keeping it in the sights of legislators. In April 2010, he testified before the House Committee on Veterans Affairs and offered IAVA’s suggestions for getting more veterans to work. Within days of his testimony, a new bill, the Veterans Employment Act of 2010, was introduced on Capitol Hill.

“A lot of folks,” Embree said, “don’t know what assets veterans bring to the table when they come to the civilian world. You have service members who are leaving the military with these phenomenal skill sets. Unfortunately, they don’t speak the business language, and … the business world does not speak military language.”

For example, said Embree, a former platoon leader – like Mujica-Parodi — might come to a job interview after coordinating the activities of dozens of people, and be told by an interviewer that he or she doesn’t have management experience. “That person would have been in charge of 60 to 90 people, and not just those people, but their families, and not just during the work week,” he said. “They would have been responsible for them seven days a week. They were responsible for making sure they had food, making sure they had a logistic chain, making sure that they had a schedule, making sure that they were meeting their goals on time. But unfortunately they don’t understand and can’t translate that into civilian-speak.”

Mujica-Parodi – who has since enrolled in one of the nation’s most prestigious business schools, the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University – said that it really does seem, at times, that the military and the business community speak completely different languages. “In the military, you have your jargon,” he said. “And in the business world you have your jargon. It’s pretty interesting, because when I’m with my school friends and there happens to be a bunch of military guys around, I might as well be speaking Latin. They have no idea what we’re talking about … You can’t possibly go into an interview with someone and have that translate.”

For Reserve and National Guardsmen, Embree said, the problem is compounded by the fact that employers often feel snakebit when an employee is called into service; in his congressional testimony, Embree recalled the first interview question posed to one Guardsman: “Are you going to be hired and than have to leave again?”

Riding Out the Recession

In Embree’s testimony, he also recounted the experience of one veteran who, after about 30 job interviews and various temporary positions, chose to return to school under the Post-9/11 Veterans Education Assistance Act, popularly known as the Post-9/11 GI Bill.

When it was passed in the summer of 2008, the Post-9/11 GI Bill was the cause of much optimism throughout the country; at last, it was widely believed there was a veterans’ education benefits bill to rival the original post-World War II bill. The original GI Bill, which paid benefits to more than half of the nation’s 15 million World War II veterans, is regarded by many historians as one of the most successful government programs in U.S. history, a law that helped usher in an era of optimism, sacrifice, and hard work.

“The first GI Bill,” Embree said, “was the shrewdest investment in our country in the past 100 years. I mean, this built the first Greatest Generation. It built the middle class. Think of how many small towns are doing well because of these small businesses that were started by World War II vets. Think of all the elected officials who have done so much, all the teachers, all the business owners.”

Of course, the number of World War II vets dwarfs those of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, but in its first year of paying benefits, the Post-9/11 GI Bill has made a significant impact, paying out $4.4 billion in benefits to 317,000 students between August 2009 and August 2010.

The provisions of the GI Bill are, by almost all accounts, unusually generous: Under the law, the Department of Veterans Affairs pays for up to 100 percent of a veteran’s tuition and required fees at a state college or university, depending on the veteran’s length of service. Subject to some restrictions, it may also include allowances for housing and books. In certain cases, the benefit may be transferred to the veteran’s spouse or other dependent. Tuition payments are made directly to the school, while money for housing and books is paid directly to the student.

First Sgt. Adam M. Caetta, Logistics Company first sergeant, Marine Special Operations Support Group, U.S. Marine Corps Forces, Special Operations Command speaks to a Marine about the education benefits the Marine Corps has to offer. Caetta earned a master's degree in business administration with a concentration in human resource management from American Military University by using Marine Corps tuition assistance and the G.I. Bill. USMC photo by Lance Cpl. Stephen C. Benson.

Private or graduate schools whose tuition is higher than the in-state maximum may choose to participate in the Yellow Ribbon Program, designed to help veteran students who want to attend higher-priced private and public universities. Under the program, the school or institution decides the level of funding it will provide – up to half the amount of the total tuition cost, which will then be matched by the VA.

Because the Kellogg School of Management is a Yellow Ribbon participant, Mujica-Parodi’s tuition, fees, and expenses – about $70,000 annually – are almost completely covered between the school and the federal government. “It’s been amazing,” he said. “Within three weeks of showing up here at Kellogg, you’re already starting to talk to companies and build contacts. It’s very interesting because when I got out of the military, it really would be difficult to find people to speak to, and it was very difficult to sell myself to them. And three weeks of business school, and all of a sudden it’s a different story. Now we’re all hot commodities. What happened in three weeks? What’s different?”

To Bob Norton, the deputy director for governmental relations with the independent nonprofit Military Officers Association of America (MOAA), the Post-9/11 GI Bill presents an amazing opportunity for most – if not all – Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. “You can see by the sharp increase in numbers of veterans using the GI Bill that they’re taking advantage of it,” he said. “So there has been a sea change. There’s no doubt about it.”

Growing Pains

The enthusiasm of groups such as IAVA and MOAA – which is one of 35 organizations in the Partnership for Veterans’ Education, a coalition that joined forces several years ago to urge a new and improved GI Bill – is not without its caveats. In the first year of benefits delivery under the new law, some shortcomings and faults have been revealed.

For one thing, implementation of the existing law was a challenge, and the VA had trouble delivering many of the benefits on time – a fact acknowledged by Keith Wilson, the VA’s director of Educational Benefits. “We knew out of the gate, when the legislation was enacted,” said Wilson, “that in order to begin paying benefits on time by law – which was Aug. 1, 2009 – we needed to cobble something together that would allow us to pay the benefit. Our existing systems at the time did not support this payment structure. We had no way of taking into account the tuition and fees, the different payments to different entities, all of those types of things. So we put together an interim payment and processing system.” Given a boost by funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the VA is now on track to have an automated process in place for educational benefits by the end of calendar year 2010.

Aside from the logistical problems at the VA, some provisions of the law have come to be regarded as unhelpful to certain categories of veterans. IAVA and MOAA have been at the forefront in examining the bill closely, discovering flaws, and proposing solutions – many of which have become part of a bill that has commonly come to be known as the Post-9/11 GI Bill 2.0 – proposed by Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, one of only three U.S. senators to have received his college education through veterans benefits.

Embree is careful to point out that IAVA does not find blame with either legislators or the VA for these perceived shortcomings. “They got a great bill passed, and there were things that people didn’t foresee or didn’t expect to happen. The new GI Bill 2.0 that Sen. Akaka has recently introduced really just perfects a lot of the points that are already firmly somewhat established.”

The major provisions of S. 3447, the Post-9/11 Veterans Education Assistance Improvements Act of 2010, include the following:

• A broader inclusion of vocational training, apprenticeships, and on-the-job training programs. Currently, the law is worded in such a way as to appear to cover only programs offered by degree-granting institutions. As Embree pointed out, more than 70 percent of the veterans who took advantage of the post-World War II GI Bill used their benefits to attend such programs. “These are your electricians, your carpenters, your pipefitters, your teamsters,” said Embree. “These folks are so important to our economy.” According to Norton and the MOAA, this provision is the most important change that needs to be made to the Post-9/11 GI Bill – and it’s interesting to note that the very first GI Bill had to be amended in order to open the door for 5.6 million veterans to attend such programs. “Isn’t it ironic that history is repeating itself?” he said. “The new GI Bill covers only academic pursuits.”

• The inclusion of members of the National Guard and Reserve who were inadvertently omitted from receipt of benefits. As worded, the Post-9/11 GI Bill did not include a significant portion of National Guard and Reserve service members – namely those who served full-time stateside for the purpose of organizing, recruiting, training, instructing, or administering Reserve components, or those who served in support of contingency operations or in response to a national emergency such as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

• Elimination of the complex calculation of tuition and fee caps on a state-by-state basis. The trouble is not only that the current program can inadvertently create inequity for private schools in places such as the District of Columbia, where there is an enormous gap between public and private tuitions; it also complicates the job of the VA’s claims processors and creates unnecessary delays. As Wilson explained, the state July-to-July fiscal cycle ensures that the VA is calculating its benefits just as many schools are determining their tuition and fees for the coming year. “The other complexity,” Wilson said, “is simply the fact that we have 53 different caps: the states, Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and Washington, D.C. Taking into account that we provide benefits to hundreds of thousands of people, and that we’ve got literally millions of folks out there who are potentially eligible, getting them to understand what their benefit may or may not be with all of these different caps, and understanding how to apply caps to where they may or may not want to go to school, is very confusing.” Under the Akaka bill, the VA will pay for tuition and fees at all public institutions, and payments for private institutions will be pegged to a national average.

• Provision of a modified living stipend to students enrolled in distance learning/online education programs. “Right now, if you are in, say, the American Military University or the University of Phoenix and you’re in a full-time online program, you do not get a housing allowance,” said Embree. “This would create a housing allowance based upon half of the national average cost, roughly $650 a month for going to school on a full-time online basis.”

• Elimination of the need for veterans to choose between GI Bill benefits or Vocational Rehabilitation and Employment (VR&E) benefits. Norton pointed out the example of a well-known student, a Marine who was severely disabled by injuries in Iraq, who is attending one of the nation’s top law schools and, because of his disability, having his tuition paid under the VR&E program. Because concurrent receipt of GI Bill and VR&E benefits is not allowed, the student does not have his living expenses – in one of the nation’s priciest housing markets – covered by the government. “This is one of the things we would like to see,” Norton said, “that if you are using the Voc-Rehab program, you should be able to get the Post-9/11 GI Bill housing allowance.”

The full provisions of S. 3447 are available in many places online, including the Library of Congress’s THOMAS Web site: http://thomas.loc.gov.

On July 21, 2010, the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs held a hearing on the proposed legislation, at which Keith Wilson spoke on behalf of the Department of Veterans Affairs. While pointing out that some of the proposals would trigger PAYGO costs, and deferring or delaying a response on two of the provisions, the VA raised very few objections to the proposals of the bill, but asked that – given the difficulties it has had in accommodating the number of claims thus far – the provisions, if passed, go into effect no earlier than August 2011.

Service members should do their research before choosing between the proposed Post 9/11 G.I. Bill and Montgomery G.I. Bill-Active Duty. It depends on the individual's situation which bill provides the most benefits. USMC photo by Lance Cpl. Manuel F. Guerrero.

“Generally speaking,” Wilson said, “and I’m talking in very broad strokes here, there are a lot of things that we are encouraged about concerning the direction the bill is going. There are some technical issues that we continue to work with the congressional staff on in terms of making sure it works, and works smoothly, for the students.”

A Total Force GI Bill

As much as it improves upon the Post-9/11 GI Bill, the 2.0 version still doesn’t provide what MOAA and the Partnership for Veterans’ Education proposed several years ago: the Total Force GI Bill. “The Montgomery GI Bill still exists, so there needs to be a way to either sunset that program or integrate it with the Post-9/11 law,” said Norton. “There’s no reason to have two full-up GI Bill programs operating alongside each other. That’s crazy and confusing for veterans. It’s a pain in the neck for the government, for the VA, and for schools to try to sort out who is entitled to what. And it’s really difficult for young men and women getting out of the service. If they already have the Montgomery GI Bill, they must make an irrevocable choice between either that one or the new one.”

For now, Embree said, the Akaka bill would mark a huge improvement in the Post-9/11 GI Bill and open doors of opportunity to thousands of eager veterans. “It’s so important to employment,” he said, “because this is giving folks an opportunity to get back into the workforce, get better educated, with the licensing and certifications they need, the professional schools and the colleges. It gives them all the options … now they might come out [of the military] and say, ‘Well, you know what? I can’t get the GI Bill coverage for that, so I might as well go to college and study something I don’t necessarily feel that passionate about.”

Mujica-Parodi, meanwhile, is one of the hundreds of thousands of veterans who have been able to pursue their passion with the help of the Post-9/11 GI Bill. “One of my goals is to leverage my military experience and also leverage this business experience,” he said. “Like anyone else, I would like to run my own business.” He envisions a future helping corporations enter emerging markets in countries such as Nigeria or Afghanistan.

Mujica-Parodi has no doubt he’ll be able to pull it off, now that Kellogg has helped him to understand what he brings to the working world. “I think there’s a direct link between my military skills and my business skills. The experiences I and other veterans bring to the table are absolutely valid and worthwhile. Could I explain that a lot better now? Yes. Absolutely.”

This article was first published in The Year in Veterans Affairs and Military Medicine: 2010-2011 Edition.

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