By Dr Flavius A B Akerele III
The Post-9/11 GI Bill expanded educational
opportunities to military veterans and their families. Through 2010, $5.7
billion was spent to provide funding for the continued education of military
service members and veterans; the estimated expenditure on the GI Bill for the
2011 fiscal year was $8 billion (United States Government Accountability
Office, 2011). Recognizing that with increased tax funding there also must be
accountability, research has been conducted on the implementation of the
benefit program, the usage rates of participants within the program, and more
recently, the program’s vulnerability to fraud and misuse. However, an area of
interest that has gone largely unstudied is the question of whether military
experience has any affect on academic outcomes. With more military members
having greater access to academic opportunities, now is an ideal time to study
academic achievement rates between veteran and nonveteran students and
determine if there are significant differences.
The first step in
comparing academic achievement rates between two groups is to decide what
specific measurements to use. Many parameters can be used: standardized tests,
graduation rates, grade point averages (GPAs), post-education employment rates.
Just as there are many ways to measure academic performance, there are also
many factors that influence academic performance. Variables such as family
history, learning environment, and socio-economic status can affect educational
outcomes, and researchers have cited several potential predictors of
educational success including ACT and Sat scores, (McLure & Child, 1999),
membership in on-campus Greek institutions (Grubb, 2005), gender (Nelson &
Leganza, 2006), and ethnicity (Juhong & Maloney, 2006). The goal of this
study was to determine what affect if any military service has on postsecondary
academic outcomes.
Literature
Relatively
little research has been conducted comparing veteran and non-veteran academic
performance, and the vast majority of research that exists on the topic is
decades old. One of the more recent examples was research by Harvey Joanning
(1975) who studied students at the university of Iowa, comparing the academic
achievement of veterans to non-veterans. Joanning (1975) used GPA as a measure
for academic achievement and found that veterans attained higher GPAs than
their non-veteran counterparts. The highest scores where achieved by students
who had attended some college after high school, entered the military, and then
returned to college after their military service ended (Joanning, 1975).
Joanning’s research was a continuation of previous work by Clark (1947), Hansen
and Paterson (1949), Frederickson and Schrader (1951), and Paraskevopoulos and
Robinson (1969) that supported the finding that veteran students performed at
higher levels in college than non-veteran students. Joanning was also testing
whether the findings for World War II veterans would hold true for veterans of
the Vietnam War. Based on the research, the difference in achievement between
veterans and non-veterans has not seemed to change over time.
Methodology
The main question
addressed by this research was whether there was a difference in academic
achievement between veteran students and no-nveteran students. Academic
achievement was measured using student grade point averages (GPAs), attrition
rates, and graduation rates. Quantitative student data from Brandman
University’s San Diego, California campus was analyzed, and students were
grouped into two categories: veteran and non-veteran. San Diego is home to one
of the largest concentrated populations of military service members and
veterans in the United States, and the Brandman University system is military
friendly with six campuses located directly on military bases.
The researcher
examined academic data from 638 undergraduate students during the time span
2009-2011. The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) 17.0 was used
to analyze the data for outliers, skewness and kurtosis, and after eliminating
all anomalous or incomplete data sets, the veteran sample population was n
= 85, and the non-veteran sample population was n = 336. Then, using the
available data, GPA, attrition rates, and graduation rates of the two sample
groups were compared. A Mann-Whitney U test was used to determine if there was
a significant difference in the GPA scores and attrition rates of veteran and
non-veteran students. A chi square test for independence (with Yates continuity
correction) was used to determine if there was a significant difference in the
graduation rates of the two groups.
Results
Based
on a statistical analysis of the data, the researcher was able to test three
hypotheses. First, it was hypothesized that there would be a significant
difference between the GPAs of veteran and non-veteran students. This
hypothesis was supported by the data. Veterans
had significantly higher mean GPA scores (Mean = 3.227) than non-veterans (Mean
= 3.069). This difference is the equivalent of approximately one half of a
letter grade (e.g., B to B+ or A- to A).
Second, it was
hypothesized that there would be a significant difference between attrition
rates based upon veteran or non-veteran status. This hypothesis was also
supported by the data. There was a significant difference in mean attrition
scores (Mann-Whitney U = 10872.000, z
= -3.448, p < 0.05, r = -0.168) with veterans exhibiting significantly
lower mean attrition scores (Mean = .22) than non-veterans (Mean = .33). This
finding indicated that veterans enrolled in 22% of the possible courses they
could have enrolled in, while non-veterans enrolled in 33% of the possible
courses that they could have enrolled in. The practical
significance of non-veterans enrolling in more classes than veteran students
means that on average, non-veterans should complete their degrees faster than
veteran students.
Third and finally, it
was hypothesized that there would be a significant difference in graduation
rates between veteran and non-veteran students. This hypothesis was not
supported by the data. Thus, despite the fact that veteran students may be
taking longer to graduate, there is no evidence that they have less chance of
graduating than their non-veteran peers.
Limitations
There
were limitations with regard to this research. This research was limited by the
fact that data was collected from a single campus in the Brandman Univeristy
system, and the population may not necessarily be easily generalizable to a
wider geographical population. Furthermore, the students in the veteran sample
population were largely members of the Navy and the Marine Corps, so a wider
veteran sample that included all branches of the military would be more
representative. A final limitation was that they research only covered the
academic years between 2009 and 2011. A longitudinal study may yield more
information with regard to trends in academic performance among the two sample
groups.
Conclusion
Based
on this study’s findings, there is a compelling argument in favor of further
research specifically aimed at discovering why veteran and non-veterans exhibit
differences in academic achievement. Several specific questions are raised by
this study’s findings. With regard to GPA, why are non-veteran students under
performing compared to veteran students? What are the differences between the
two groups? What factors affect GPA? In terms of persistence rates, one must
ask why do veteran students enroll in significantly fewer courses than
non-veteran students? Is there a link between enrolling in fewer classes per
term and higher GPA scores?
With greater
numbers of veterans entering postsecondary education after military service due
to government benefits like the Post-9/11 GI Bill, the importance of this
research is only reinforced. Veterans currently face much higher rates of
unemployment than non-veterans (Beucke, 2011). This fact, combined with the
continuing draw down of troops from both Iraq and Afghanistan, has the
potential to contribute to even larger numbers of military veterans entering
postsecondary institutions to further their education and put themselves in
better positions to find jobs. The sizable investments of both time and money
devoted to postsecondary education alone would make research into veteran
academic achievement useful. However, several practical implications exist for
both veteran students and academic institutions, and only through further study
can those implications be better understood.
References
Beucke,
D. (2011, November 11). Unemployment for young vets: 30%, and rising. BloombergBusinessweek.
Retrieved from
http://www.businessweek.com/finance/occupy-wall-street/archives/2011/11/the_vets_job_crisis_is_worse_than_you_think.html
Clark,
E. L. (1947). Veteran as a college freshman. School and Society, 66,
205-207.
Fredericksen,
N., & Schrader, W. B. (1951). Adjustment to college. Princeton, NJ:
Educational Testing Service.
Grubb,
F. (2006). Does going Greek impair undergraduate academic performance? A case
study. The American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 65(5),
1085-1087.
Nansen,
L. M., & Paterson,m D. G. (1949). Scholastic achievement of veterans. School
and Society, 69, 195-197.
Joanning,
H. (1975). The academic performance of Vietnam Veteran college students. The
Journal of College Student Personnel, 16(1), 10-13.
Juhong,
B., & Maloney, T. (2006). Ethnicity and academic success at university. New
Zealand Economic Papers, 40(2), 181-183.
McLure,
G. T., & Child, R. L. (1999). Upward Bound students compared to other
college-bound students: Profiles of nonacademic characteristics and academic
achievement. The Journal of Negro Education, 67(4), 37.
Nelson,
C. V., & Leganza, K. K. (2006). Is gender a predictor of success in college
mathematics courses? College and University, 81(4), 11-13.
Paraskevopoulos,
J., & Robinson, L. F. (1969). Comparison of college performance of cold war
veterans and non-veterans. College and University, 44(2), 189-191.
United
States Government Accountability Office. (2011, May). Veterans’ education
benefits: Enhanced guidance and collaboration could improve administration of
the Post-9/11 GI Bill program. [GAO-11-356R]. Retrieved from
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d11356r.pdf
