It's Memorial Day, so it's perhaps appropriate that my inaugural post should address one of the most significant challenges faced by military service members trying to access higher education.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, I earned three degrees part-time while on active duty, navigating the same scheduling constraints, institutional indifference, and administrative obstacles I've spent the past twenty-six years in higher education trying to dismantle.
We haven't dismantled much.
Over a million active duty service members are currently not using their education benefits. In a force of 1.3 million, only 15–20% access Tuition Assistance annually. We can blame the military's unpredictable schedules, time constraints, and administrative complexity. Those are real. But the deeper barrier, the one beyond any service member's control, is the failure of colleges and universities to meaningfully recognize what military personnel already know.
Until we're honest about how broken the credit recognition system is, no amount of "military-friendly" marketing will improve access for those who serve.
I've watched Navy cybersecurity specialists with years of experience defending classified networks against live intrusion attempts get told they need to complete Introduction to Computer Security. I've seen senior enlisted electronics technicians with advanced technical training receive a handful of elective credits that apply toward nothing in their degree plans. Intelligence analysts whose expertise exceeded most civilian program graduates walked away with meaningless credit for their training and professional military education.
Private universities bear particular responsibility. Their economic model depends on tuition revenue, and every credit awarded for military training is tuition not collected. At $1,850 per credit hour, recognizing thirty credits of military training represents $55,500 in foregone revenue. The institutional response is predictable: restrictive transfer policies, hard caps on transfer credits, and requirements that military training align precisely with proprietary curricula regardless of demonstrated mastery.
The structural problem runs deeper still. Higher education was designed to move eighteen-year-olds linearly through four-year programs. The military's training philosophy runs directly counter to that model. Military personnel receive intensive, competency-based technical education and then apply it immediately in operational environments under real conditions. They arrive at our institutions carrying advanced expertise in specific domains, looking for credentials that validate and extend what they already know — and we send them back to the beginning.
What a Better Model Looks Like
It is possible to remove the credit equivalency barriers without dismantling the entire enterprise. The solution starts with abandoning the fiction that traditional degree structures are accessible to military learners.
Digital badges as the foundation. A digital badge can translate eighteen months of Navy nuclear training into specific competencies articulated in language employers recognize. Badges carry metadata about what was learned and how it was assessed. Service members can display them on LinkedIn, Handshake, and USAJobs without asking employers to decode academic transcripts. In the model I'm advocating for, institutions award badges based on completed military training without requiring enrollment in a degree program — and when a service member later chooses to pursue a degree, those badges stack toward certificates and degrees, filling genuine gaps rather than forcing repetition.
Competency-based assessment instead of seat time. A service member with years of cybersecurity experience should not sit through sixteen weeks of lectures on network security. They should demonstrate competency through assessment, receive recognition for what they know, and move directly to advanced content. I've piloted this approach; the results were predictable: service members advanced faster, engaged more deeply, and persisted at higher rates. The model works.
Modular pathways instead of semester-long commitments. The traditional academic calendar is built on a 400-year-old agrarian schedule. It has no inherent educational logic, and it is nearly incompatible with enlisted military life. Four-week modules that service members complete when their schedules allow, earning credentials that accumulate over time, are not difficult to design or implement.
Stackable credentials with standalone value. A logistics certificate that recognizes military training plus three targeted additional courses should carry immediate employment value and count as progress toward a bachelor's degree. Designing for that reality is a recognition that standards of access matter as much as standards of achievement.
The 15–20% TA utilization rate is not a mystery. It is a measurement of how well the structures we have built actually support the people we claim to serve. A million active duty service members are in the workforce right now, carrying expertise earned under conditions most of our faculty will never experience, and waiting to see whether higher education will meet them where they are.
We have the tools. We have the knowledge. What we need is the institutional will to use them.
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