Strategic Goal: Ensure a smooth transition for veterans from active military service to civilian life. Veterans will be fully reintegrated into their communities with minimum disruption to their lives through employment services, including vocational rehabilitation; education assistance; home loan guarantees; life insurance; and transitional health care and readjustment counseling.

Objective: Assist veterans in readjusting to civilian life by restoring lost educational opportunities and enhancing their ability to achieve educational and career goals.

Performance Goal: Improve the Montgomery GI Bill active duty usage rate to 60 percent.

The extent to which eligible beneficiaries use their earned benefit is one measure of program success. A greater number of veterans using the MGIB will contribute to a more highly educated and productive workforce, thus enhancing the Nation’s competitiveness. Veterans use the benefit to readjust to civilian life and achieve educational or vocational objectives that might not have been attained had they not entered military service. DoD uses the educational benefits under the MGIB as a successful recruiting tool.

The Education Service has been working with stakeholders to reevaluate program outcomes and how best to meet statutory intent and the expectations of veterans. During FY 1998, VA initiated a formal program evaluation for each major education benefit. This evaluation, which will be completed during FY 2000, will help us assess the extent to which the education programs are meeting their statutory intents and fill existing data gaps.

Legislation enacted in 1998 directed VA to perform more extensive outreach and provided a funding vehicle through the Readjustment Benefit account. Working with DoD’s Defense Manpower Data Center (DMDC), VA began an outreach program to active duty personnel who have at least one year of service and have enrolled in the Montgomery GI Bill. The first mailing occurred in 1999. We will continue to work with our partners in developing strategies to disseminate VA benefits information at the proper intervals throughout military service.

Increasing the MGIB usage rate requires coordination between VA and organizations currently performing, or planning to perform, outreach activities. In addition to this partnering, a coordinated effort with DoD is underway to identify eligible service personnel and to build upon existing base counseling and outreach activities at military bases. State approving agencies and other stakeholders will provide a presence in remote locations. VA intends to establish a network for effective education outreach by supporting various activities in place and creating other activities to improve beneficiary access to benefits and services.

There are no major management challenges that will affect achievement of this performance goal.

The MGIB usage rate is calculated by dividing the cumulative number of individuals who began a program of education under the MGIB, by the cumulative number of potentially eligible veteran beneficiaries. DMDC tabulates the annual usage rate, using their records and data from VA’s Education Master Record File. There is no independent validation of this data.

(For additional information on this performance goal, refer to General Operating Expenses, Volume 4, Chapter 2C.)