Last year the Department of Defense issued the Memorandum of Understanding for Voluntary Education Programs, aka the DoD Vol-Ed MOU. The MOU established new policies that schools were told they had to agree to by December 30, 2011 in order to participate in the military tuition assistance program.
Although more than 2,000 schools signed the agreement, some schools held off due to concerns of academic sovereignty, among other things. Late last year the U.S. Senate weighed in asking DoD to postpone the deadline until some issues were resolved.
DoD responded on December 15, 2011, by extending the December 30, 2011, to March 30, 2012. The 90-day extension was to give the DoD time to work with stakeholders to answer concerns, and provide clarifications to strengthen the MOU provisions and improve the higher education community's awareness and understanding of the memorandum.
DoD recently announced that they will not implement the MOU until sometime this summer and schools will have ample opportunity to review the MOU before the policy goes into effect. This means that untilDoD sets the new implementation date for the MOU, which is anticipated the summer of 2012, schools will remain eligible for TA, even if they have not signed the MOU yet.
DoD says that as soon as the staffing is completed, the amended MOU and the policy implementation date will be announced on the DoD MOU web page.
