College is expensive, and unfortunately for us, higher education costs have only continued to rise in recent years. 

As students, we have a variety of costs to cover other than tuition. We have our housing, our textbooks and other learning tools for our classes and any extra University fees.

For veterans, though their college costs are fully covered by the state of Illinois, paying still comes with difficult choices.

Under the current system in Illinois, veteran students must use all of their state benefits before they can have access to their Post-9/11 GI Bill, or federal benefits, if they want to use the two benefits during the same academic term. Then the federal benefits can be used to cover any excess expenses.

Otherwise, those veterans can make the choice not to use their state benefits and only use their Post-9/11 GI Bill benefits, in which case they can save their state benefits for future education purposes.

This is an issue because those two benefits can be used to cover different costs. Federal benefits can be used to pay for housing, tuition, books and fees at any public or private institutions, while state benefits will only cover tuition and fees at public universities and community colleges. 

Veterans should be able to choose which of their benefits they can use first while still getting the most out of them. 

These benefits could make the difference between veterans being able to afford attending college, which is what the benefits are supposed to provide for them. Veterans should not have to make such a difficult choice when they’re trying to get an education that was supposed to be given to them for their service. 

Illinois hopes to change the system by having institutions of higher education apply the Post-9/11 GI Bill benefits to students first, that way they can pay for the aforementioned costs like housing and books. The students would then be able to use the state benefits for remaining costs like tuition and fees or future education purposes.

This could prove beneficial to our state’s veteran students by allowing them to take full advantage of the benefits given to them for their service. Having access to more benefits may also mean that more veterans are able to attend college because they can appropriately pay for the costs.

We support this fight to allow student veterans full access to their benefits. It is only right that those who have fought for our rights are able to pay for their education. We should give back to those who have risked so much for us.