Matthew Reilly's roundabout journey to college took a painful, decisive turn after a nighttime crash in Iraq. In 2008, six months into his first combat tour with the Army, Mr. Reilly and nine soldiers from his platoon were pursuing an insurgent when their armored fighting vehicle slammed into a roadblock. It was 2 o'clock in the morning, and fresh…

As the Post-9/11 GI Bill nears its fourth year, with more than 550,000 veterans enrolled in thousands of institutions, advocacy groups, lawmakers, and President Obama warn that veterans are vulnerable in a higher-education marketplace eager for their GI Bill dollars--with some purveyors, particularly for-profits, recruiting aggressively. The…

As a new GI Bill moved through Congress in 2008, a handful of influential politicians grew concerned. Would such a generous education program trigger an exodus of service members during two wars? At the Pentagon's urging, the lawmakers proposed a fix: Give troops the option to transfer their benefits to a child or spouse. That policy quickly…

As colleges add services for the growing number of student veterans, they find that many women in that population seem reluctant to participate. On many campuses, officials find that only a sprinkling of women take part in programs and services designed to support veterans. The low turnout appears to be at odds with the number of female veterans…

Growing up in Westminster in northern Maryland, Ron Shriver, 29, used to pass by the stately brick buildings of the college that is now McDaniel College and wonder: What went on up there on that hill overlooking Main Street? What would it be like to go to a college like that? What would it be like to go to college at all? Nobody in Mr. Shriver's…

About 16 percent of veterans use the GI Bill to attend private institutions, roughly the same proportion as students generally. But at the most highly selective colleges, veterans using the Post-9/11 GI Bill barely fill a single classroom--38 at Penn, 22 at Cornell, and at Princeton, just one. The sparse numbers do not go unnoticed, veterans say.…

The nation's veteran population is expected to swell by a million or more in coming years as the military winds down more than a decade of conflicts. How veterans adjust to life out of uniform has become the subject of heightened scrutiny in the military community and beyond. As today's returning service members confront a stagnant economy--and a…

This article features four colleges and how they take on veterans' issues in research and real life. These colleges are (1) Syracuse University; (2) Purdue University; (3) University of Southern California; and (4) University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Last year Syracuse established the Institute for Veterans and Military Families to focus…