College program for military spouses restored

Amy Wilmot’s plans to take college classes this summer are back on track.

The wife of a Cherry Point Marine is one of thousands of military spouses who will benefit from the reinstatement of the tuition assistance program Military Spouse Career Advancement Accounts starting at noon on Saturday for current enrollees.

The program, known as MyCAA, provided up to $6,000 for spouses of military personnel to go to college or get career training. MyCAA was halted Feb. 16 due to an “unforeseen, unprecedented spike in enrollments,” according to a message that had been posted on the Web site militaryonesource.com.

The program will be resumed for 136,583 military spouses who have established accounts through MyCAA, according to Lt. Col. April Cunningham of the U.S. Air Force, a public affairs officer in the Defense Press Office.

Wilmot, a mother of four, said she is ecstatic that the program is back online. She has been using MyCAA to work on her associate’s in arts degree at Craven Community College with a major in communications.

“Now I can go back in the summer, and I don’t have to worry about anything coming out of pocket, and I can take more classes than I thought I could,” she said.

The program was temporarily paused in response to a six-fold increase in enrollment in January, according to the message. That trend continued last month, overwhelming the program’s support system and pushing the program to its $166 million budget threshold for fiscal year 2010.

The site acknowledged that the program was halted abruptly and that participants were not adequately informed of the pause. U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan, D-N.C., and U.S. Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., wrote letters to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in response to the stoppage.

Hagan said that she questioned Air Force leaders at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing about why families were not notified prior to the suspension of the program. She said she plans to work on the committee to ensure the program is “adequately resourced to meet the needs of our military families.”

“The fact that this program was shut down, without notifying these spouses, and giving any notice or reason that a pause was in place, was certainly an unfair action that was taken,” Hagan said Thursday in a statement..

Burr said that he “remain(s) concerned” that the Department of Defense has not indicated when it will allow new spouses to participate in the program.

His letter to Gates details the story of one constituent who went to access $4,500 for tuition to find that the money was gone. The only explanation she received was an announcement on the Web site that started with the sentence “effective immediately, the MyCAA program is temporarily halting operations.”

“I intend to work with DOD officials to see that they (afford) all military spouses the opportunity to participate in this program so that they can further their education,” Burr said in a statement.

Cunningham said that the decision to reinstate the program for enrolled participants was made by the Department of Defense Military Community and Family Policy office that is responsible for the program’s management.

“We reinstated the program because we were able to reprogram money to meet the immediate MyCAA program needs,” Cunningham said. “We are still exploring options for the long-term scope of the program.”

MyCAA was launched in March of 2009 to give military spouses an opportunity to pursue “portable careers” in high-demand, high-growth occupations, according to Cunningham.

“Our military spouses are important and play a key role in supporting our service members,” she said. “Most of the time, when the service member moves, the spouse moves, too. This makes it challenging for military spouses who choose to have a career.”

Cunningham added that a 2008 Department of Defense survey found that 77 percent of 1.3 million active duty spouses surveyed said they wanted or needed to work.