Best Career and Technical Colleges of 2015 for Vets

Most military jobs provide in-depth knowledge and technical expertise to the service members. However, once retired, it is difficult to understand where to use this knowledge and skill set in the civilian world.
According to Gregory Scargall, veterans resource specialist at Santa Fe Community College, ?They have that technical experience, but they really don’t know where to plug that in.? He added that with the right education from a good technical school, ?they’re able to re-harness some of that experience.?

Scargall runs a school based in New Mexico. The school topped the 2015 Best for Vets: Career and Technical Colleges rankings of the Military Times. Moreover, among the top five were The Los Angeles Film School in California, Thomas and Nelson Community College in Virginia and Virginia College based in Alabama. Note that all these rankings were given out after evaluating schools in accordance with their responses through the detailed survey of more than 100 questions.

In accordance with their responses, alongside the Education Department data, the points in consideration were the culture, student support, academic policies, financial considerations and academic qualities of each school. On an average, around 13 percent of the enrollments of schools among all were able to respond to the survey. It was noted that most schools that responded were on the same page with the federal initiatives regarding military education.

Almost 9 out of every 10 schools responded saying that they have signed on to the White House?s Principles of
Excellence for military education. In addition, almost 8 of them said that they have also signed on the first and second versions of the Memorandum of Understanding. This memorandum was tied by the Defense Department to one of its tuition assistance programs.

More than six out of 10 responded saying that they have vet or military groups on campus. But, only 43 percent of them have veteran offices on their campus. A lot of schools have recently started tracking their vet and military student populations. However, still the majority does not do it. It was observed that only four out of every 10 schools are capable of providing military-specific academic outcome data.

Nevertheless, career and technical programs are usually less costly than most four-year degrees. However, according to the surveys, most vets might find themselves fetching tuition fees or financial assistance to pay for the fees. Only half of the schools offer undergraduate tuition fee rates that are being $250 per-credit hour for military tuition assistance. Similarly, for graduate education, the number is than three out of ten.

You can find all the rankings of the schools here:

School Rankings