The Post-9/11 GI Bill: Beneficiaries, Choices, and Cost

Beginning August 1, 2009, the Post-9/11 GI Bill extended educational benefits to service members who were on active duty in the military on or after September 11, 2001. This GI Bill (officially the Post 9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act of 2008), the latest version of a law that helps veterans pay for higher education, provides more extensive benefits than have ever been offered to current and former service members, enabling them to transfer its benefits to certain family members and to enroll in a wide array of educational and training programs. In March 2019, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) reported that in 2018 it spent about $10.7 billion on 700,000 beneficiaries of the Post-9/11 GI Bill. At the request of the House Budget Committee, the Congressional Budget Office analyzed data from VA to understand the law's cost, the types of educational programs beneficiaries enrolled in, and the institutions they attended. CBO also reviewed research related to some of the law's stated purposes, such as motivating people to join or stay in the military and using the educational benefits as part of readjusting to civilian life. This analysis primarily describes spending in 2016, with some information from 2017 and some historical data from 2009 onward.