Creating Community for Vets at Rural Colleges

Higher education institutions across the country have been working to provide support for student veterans since The Servicemen’s Readjustment Act, also known as the G.I. Bill, was signed into law in 1944. But a new research review by the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE) found that the services are not necessarily reaching as many veterans as they could, particularly at rural community colleges.

Generally, the research shows that veterans are highly concentrated in small-town America, where many colleges are already offering veterans support. But by treating former service members as a discrete group, institutions may be unintentionally isolating rather than integrating them.

“A lot of initiatives tend to look at the veterans as a separate population from the general student. And I understand that. A lot of veterans are nontraditional, first-generation students,” said Jason Alves, director of WICHE’s Veteran Initiatives and co-author of the review.

Connecting veterans with other students and administrators through student clubs, cultural centers and student support services is the key to enrolling and retaining veterans, he said, and aligns with the original intent of the G.I. Bill to ease their transition from military service to civilian life.

“We know rural-serving colleges are deeply integrated within their communities,” Alves said. “And by integrating those veterans in the college, they then have the opportunity to turn around and provide more services to their rural community.”

A Growing Rural Population

The research, published in July, also shows that catering to veterans can create a crucial return on investment for the colleges: increases in enrollment.

Small colleges have long feared the demographic cliff of traditional college-aged students, but based on WICHE’s analysis, there’s an easy solution, said Andrew Koricich, an associate professor of higher education at Appalachian State University. Institutions simply need to reach the large population of adult learners who haven’t completed college—and sometimes the key to recruiting them is meeting them where they are, he said. For veterans, that’s often in rural communities.

Nearly 25 percent of U.S. veterans live in rural communities, a 2022 report from the Department of Veterans Affairs found, compared to about 14 percent of the overall population, according to the Department of Agriculture. Between 2006 and 2016, the number of post-9/11 veterans residing in rural communities more than doubled, from just under 200,000 to more than 400,000.

The concentration of veterans in small town America is even higher among certain historically underserved racial groups: for instance, 40 percent of native/Indigenous veterans live in a rural region. And projections show that the number of veterans identifying as a racial minority is expected to increase from 26 percent in 2020 to 39 percent by 2044.

“They’re already here,” Koricich said. “It’s about the degree to which we create services and structures and opportunities to help them succeed on our campuses and complete their degrees.”

Integrate, Not Isolate

To achieve that, WICHE suggests implementing a “Framework of Service,” which starts by asking, “Why is the institution recruiting veterans in the first place?” Alves said. What are some of the reasons that a public institution feels called to support veterans in the first place, and do those reasons align with the G.I. Bill’s intent to create a safe landing pad after they leave the military?

Then, colleges must work with veterans to identify what their specific needs are, he explained, which happens when they are given a seat at the table. Getting veterans involved in clubs or creating a service center that does more than provide one-on-one counseling gives them skin in the game, Alves said. And once they feel a sense of community, they are more likely to turn around and give back to the institution by mentoring new enrollees or investing in the local economy after they graduate.

“Hopefully it’s building a cycle,” he said.

But sometimes ​​providing veterans with specialized services and programs can create a silo, the WICHE analysis warns, leaving service members feeling disconnected from the larger student body.

Christopher Breitmeyer, president of the Rural Community College Alliance and of Clatsop Community College in Astoria, Oregon, said he understands the caveat.

“We do sometimes fall victim to this separation, not necessarily intentionally, but that’s where a group like the rural community college alliance can offer resources to our schools to be able to note that and help them guard against it,” he said. “One of the things that successful colleges have done is getting veterans involved in student government. That really does help that integration and cross-pollination of groups who might not otherwise interact.”

Striking that balance between creating community among veterans and integration with the larger campus is a goal worth striving for, higher education advocates say, not only at community colleges but four-year universities, too.

“This is part of our social compact with the people that serve in our military, is that if they are willing to make that sacrifice, we should be making investments in them,” said Koricich, who is also executive director of the Alliance for Research on Regional Colleges. “But beyond the duty-bound aspect, regional publics are places of access, and it is where we’re trying to generate social mobility.”

In the meantime, the greatest challenge will be executing WICHE’s recommendations with limited funding and resources.

“The proposed framework for serving veterans melds with the direction that colleges are going already. We’re recognizing that our rural communities are not homogeneous. And I think rural community colleges are on the leading edge of support for those students that are underserved,” ​​Breitmeyer said. “The challenge for smaller schools is one of resources, and not just fiscal resources but attracting personnel who can help to support that diverse population.”

As a veteran himself, Alves knows from personal experience that it is possible.

“In my transition from the military to higher education as a first generation student, there were a lot of hurdles, a lot of new languages that I needed to learn,” he said. “Luckily, I found connection through student veterans groups. I found access to other resources and benefits while I was going to college, and I was able to persist. And it completely changed the opportunities that I had available.”