Soldiers have the commitment and self-discipline that’s needed to experience success with online college courses. For members of the military, online college programs offer flexibility that can provide stability: Studies can be conducted anywhere and without transfers and deployments interrupting them. In the military, online college classes, like their more conventional counterparts, are taken while solders are off-duty. Continuing education in the military is voluntary, often free, and experts cite several positives associated with it.
“Voluntary education programs help members improve their mission performance, prepare members for greater responsibility and enhance their professional, as well as their personal, potential,” Education Technician Lori Popp of the Lifelong Learning section of Marine and Family Services aboard North Carolina’s Camp Lejeune told the Jacksonville Daily News in July 2009.
The Servicemen’s Readjustment Act, also known as the GI Bill, was signed in to law in 1944 in part as a means of offering college scholarships to anyone who served in uniform. By 1947, veterans accounted for nearly half of all college students in the United States, according to a Time Magazine article. A Post 9/11 GI Bill has since made as much as 100 percent tuition available to service members on active duty after Sept. 10, 2001. The Post 9/11 Bill covers graduate and undergraduate degrees as well as vocational or technical training provided by approved institutions and provides stipends for books and housing.
Military training and experience can translate to academic credits, and more than 1,900 community colleges and online universities that have reportedly partnered with the U.S. Army accept these credits from soldiers during or after service. Many bases are said to include satellite campuses of local accredited universities.
Local, accredited universities are said to make continuing education convenient for soldiers by offering satellite campuses on many bases, and online college courses and programs allow for greater mobility. Technological advances in distance learning opportunities make it easier for deployed service members to continue their education, Lori Popp told the Jacksonville Daily News.
Online classes and online degree programs are particularly popular among students who otherwise might not be able to attend a traditional campus, and their popularity has been steadily increasing. The Consortium is made up of a group of organizations and institutions that are dedicated to quality online education. The recently released results of a study, “Learning on Demand: Online Education in the United States,” showed that 4.6 million students enrolled in online classes for the fall 2008 semester, a 17 percent increase over fall 2007.
According to Popp, more than 1,000 deployed marines and sailors these days put tuition assistance to use. Among the military, online courses are a “boon” for those who “want to participate in college despite geographic displacement,” an October article in The Chronicle of Higher Education reported. The article, centered around a professor and National Guardsman who continued teaching online classes after being deployed to Iraq, noted that soldiers work, read, exercise, play video games and watch movies when the situation isn’t hectic. Deployed soldiers also enroll in online college classes, according to The Chronicle.
U.S. Marines Corporal Dakota Berg is among the latter, according to the Jacksonville Daily News. He joined the military after his 2006 high school graduation as a means of paying for his college courses online and pursued an online degree in accounting, the News article stated. The military’s tuition assistance program relieved a lot of financial and mental stress, Berg told the Daily News–and, through receiving his online degrees, he reportedly continued his education after being deployed from Parris Island, S.C., to Iraq.