Around 50 veterans were cut off from tuition funding Tuesday because of technical difficulties at the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), according to KSNT.
The vets are participants in the VA's Vocational Rehabilitation program, which aims to help injured veterans adjust to civilian life by providing them with job training, tuition funding, and housing assistance.
The VA blamed technical difficulties for funding cut-off, saying that the VA Benefits Administration digitized 5,000 tons of veteran records after the Vocational Rehabilitation program received an unprecedented 1.44 million applications in 2014.
Will Streitberger, Regional Director of VA Benefit Administration, told KNST that digitizing was meant to make the claim-handling process more efficient. However, it did not go as planned.
KNST reports:
"256 veterans went through that conversion process and there were some admittedly some hiccups in making that transition," said Streitberger. "I would like to apologize for any inconvenience these veterans have experienced."
According to Streitberger, all veterans have been fully reimbursed. Some veterans, interviewed by News8 said they are still waiting for some money they believe they are owed. Privacy rules stop the VA from disclosing information about specific veterans.
Going forward, Streitberger said the issue that caused this backlog should not be repeated.
"Our expectation is that there will be no furtherance of any delays," said Streitberger.
Despite the VA's apology, veterans were hurt by the error, which occurred without explanation.
"We were told absolutely nothing," U.S. Marine Walter Williams told KSNT. "Not one email, not one phone call. We just didn’t receive our money."
For an estimated 50 University of New Haven students, the Vocational Rehabilitation payments stopped in the early summer. Their calls and emails went unreturned. When they did reach someone with the VA, the answer was "I don’t know" and "be patient."
UNH students brought their concerns were brought to Associate Vice President of Enrollment and Marketing Sean-Michael Green.
"If the whole goal is to get people through college, then the program is failing right now," said Green. "This is the first time that I can remember that the VA has fallen this far behind."
Students, facing the threat of not being able to pay their tuition, were given short term interest free loans from the University. Agreements were made with the business department that they could remain in school, even without their tuition paid. For students who had to take out additional loans, they were not dispersed, because the Vocational Rehab money wasn’t delivered to the school first.
These issues were echoed at Southern Connecticut State University, where for 40 years, Jack Mordente has helped returning veterans transition to a college life.
"Last time I experienced this was maybe in the early 80’s with it happening to Vietnam veterans," said Mordente. "It’s creating a lot of stress."
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"Your landlord doesn’t want to hear that you can’t pay your bills because you haven’t gotten paid by the VA," said Army veteran Tiara Boehm.
"I just have this knot in the back of my head worrying about whether I’m going to have to quit school and get a third job," said Williams.