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Comment by soared | Hacker News Reader

Thank you for the post. I had friends in college who were previously marines, but their entire school was paid for along with something to the effect of “Anything you need to achieve the career you want, within reason”. New laptops, writing easels, etc.

Are there varying levels of educational assistance?

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There are varying levels of accuracy in his post.

For the GI Bill, I put in $1200 ($100/month for the first year), and I while enrolled at an accredited university I was paid $400/month. I could use that however I wanted. Early 90's, that didn't come close to paying for much, but it was certainly something.

I was in the Marines, however. The Army, Navy and Air Force had matching funds and paid a lot more (like triple). This may have all changed or become consolidated.

I've also been through the VA for something and it's very much a government bureaucracy. If you have things documented it will run smoother, and it may run slow at times, but there is certainly no policy of denying everything.

The poster above just has an axe to grind and isn't concerned with reality.

It changed a ton. Over the late 90's (ie, in my day) the per-month payments were increased up to a little over 1k. The Post-9/11 GI Bill is structured very differently and is far more generous: Tuition + BAH. There's a ton of fine print around the tuition part, but in practice it really does fully cover tuition just about everywhere in the US.

My experience is a bit old (2008 ish) so things might have changes.

I had the GI Bill. I submitted paper work each month that showed I was taking a certain number of credits towards my degree to the VA dept at the school. Money was deposited into my bank account a couple weeks later. I could use that money for anything I wanted. Sounds like this is what your friends had/have.

There are other programs such as paying off student loans when you join up, but I am not familiar with them.

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