Should Children from Military Families Receive College Tuition Discounts?

With the rising tuition costs in America, many children from middle class and lower class homes may lose out on the opportunity of pursuing dreams and career goals because their families cannot afford the extra expenses of paying for college tuition. Military families are not wealthy families and sometimes saving money is difficult due to different factors that arise during the course of serving your country.

For instance, maybe your family relied and benefited from having both parents working, but a recent change of bases takes you to an area where the non-military dependent spouse is unable to attain work (occurs at many overseas bases and even stateside bases in densely populated communities) in their career field or has to settle on a job that pays way less then accustomed to. This puts a strain on finances and often negatively hinders saving money.

Today, applying for financial aid for your child when you come from a military family is almost laughable. The financial aid application forces military families to add in to the equation funds that are not necessarily given to the family such as money military member receives for their personal clothing allowance (covers their uniforms and equipment), a rough estimate on housing allowance even if you do not receive it because you live in base housing, any extra money the service member may have received for going TDY or being deployed during that filing year. This often places the family in a position of having to contribute more money toward the child's tuition, and often this is falsely calculated against funds that are never actually used in a family's budget, because it is never physically given to them to be used as actual money. It is not like the service member can take that extra food allowance they are given when they go TDY and put it toward tuition, right? Unfortunately when calculating financial aid for service member's dependents, it is often an unfair and unrealistic process.