"Open the hurt locker and learn": Veterans Education and the Civil-Military Gap

Author(s): McBain, Lesley | Advisor(s): Hurtado, Sylvia | Abstract: The passage of the 2008 Post-9/11 GI Bill created the most complex policy iteration of the GI Bill to date. The bill’s payment structure forced closer interactions between the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and higher education institutions, as well as their representative associations. These relations are examined against the larger societal backdrop of a civil-military gap established in a robust literature of military sociology and specific research on civil-military relations. However, higher education researchers have not studied the policy relations between higher education associations and military- and veteran-serving agencies (e.g., the Department of Defense [DoD] and VA). This study’s purpose was to illuminate, using a case study design including both document analysis and interviews with participants from three higher education associations, the worlds of veterans education policy and associations representative of institutions charged with implementation. Narratives, counternarratives, and metanarratives were identified using a transformative research paradigm. Findings indicate that a civil-military gap exists in associations’ interactions with military- and veteran-serving agencies but relationships are dynamic and complicated by organizational cultural divides. The study contributes to the literature on higher education associations, providing evidence regarding the little-researched power and behind-the-scenes influence on national higher education policy. The second contribution is a focus on documenting dimensions of the civil-military gap in veterans education policy. However, results also indicated a dynamic, symbiotic and mutually dependent, and sometimes contentious relationship rather than a single, static gap. Against this constantly changing backdrop, associations attempted to influence the enactment of orderly veterans education policies befitting intended federal goals for student veterans and commonly accepted higher education practices. Yet the civil-military gap also disrupted associations’ capacity to implement veterans education policy including modes of operation among military- and veteran-serving agencies that hinder not only communication and Post-9/11 GI Bill benefit payment processing, but also realistic assessment and research on student veterans’ academic and social needs. The study proposes an action plan for research, policy and practice that higher education associations might use to attempt to bridge the civil-military gap in veterans education policy and enable veterans’ success in higher education.