College program for military spouses stopped

Amy Wilmot married her husband, a Cherry Point Marine, right out of high school, and she said she’s been a full-time mom for 12 years.

Now Wilmot, 36, is a full-time student. She said there’s no time like the present to pursue her career and life goals now that her husband is close to retirement and she has the money to do so.

Wilmot and other military spouses were eligible to receive up to $6,000 in tuition assistance to go back to school through the federal Military Spouse Career Advancement Accounts (MyCAA) program.

“This is more to me, an exciting part of my life actually, getting things that I want actually for myself,” said Wilmot, who is pursuing her associate’s in arts degree at Craven Community College and a major in communications. “Every part of it is exciting.”

But the program that provided funding for college, career training, licenses or certificates was temporarily halted last month, leaving some students like Wilmot without the means to finance the rest of the education they had already started, and disappointing others who hadn’t yet started working on their educational goals.

The Department of Defense-sponsored program was paused temporarily because of an “unforeseen, unprecedented spike in enrollments,” according to a message on the Web site, militaryonesource.com.

The program saw a six-fold increase in enrollment in January of this year, and the trend continued last month, according to the site. The applications overwhelmed the program’s support system, and almost caused the program to reach its budget threshold.

Military spouses who had financial documents approved still received financial assistance, the site stated, but there was still a backlash from participants in response to the program’s pause.

“In the days following the announcement of a temporary pause of the Career Advancement Account — MyCAA — we heard concerns expressed by many program participants,” the Web site states. “We regret the lack of notice in alerting you to the pause and assure you this was done in the best interest of all.”

Gery Boucher, dean of the college’s Havelock campus, said that there were students at Craven Community College who were directly affected by the program’s pause.

He worked personally with two students to find alternative funding sources to allow them to continue their studies.

“Some were disappointed to know that MyCAA was postponed, and really had to struggle to find a way to pay for their schooling for B-term education,” he said.

Boucher said the college had seen a dramatic increase in the use of the program since the summer of 2009. The college had only four students using the funding that summer, but by the fall there were 77 students using it, and 161 students using it by the spring of this year.

Of the two students he helped to find alternative funding sources, one of them was starting her first semester at the college because of the MyCAA opportunity.

The other student was in the process of working on a degree, with one to two semesters left, and was able to find funding to continue her studies.

“Whenever you have a source of funding to pay for education, and are relying on that source, to have it not be available, impacts a student most definitely,” Boucher said.

Wilmot said she has her fingers crossed that the program will go back online, since she doesn’t know if she’ll be able to continue her studies as a full-time student over the summer without it.

“My feelings are, I’m glad I’m in, I’m glad I got to use it; I hope it’s up by (summer) registration,” she said.

Her neighbor who also lives on base, Tia Connelly, was researching the program as a funding source to allow her to go back to school to get a nursing degree. She had her sights on the career since it could potentially offer her a job wherever the military takes her family.

“If the program doesn’t come back, I’m not going to be able to go back to school,” she said.

Connelly, a military spouse and mother of three, said she saw the program as a chance to do something positive since it’s a challenge for military spouses to start and finish degrees when they have to move every two to three years.

Many spouses don’t want to invest money in a degree they can’t finish before they are uprooted.

 “They all face that same challenge, and I think that’s why that program was so wildly successful,” she said.

Connelly said she is heartbroken for those who started degrees but were not able to finish them.

Those students had to build up courage to go back to school, she said, and there is a short window of opportunity to finish their degrees before they will have to move again because of a reassignment.

“My heart just goes out to all the people who are midway through,” she said. “They finally get going, and (here is) another reason for them to stop.”