Assistance program
Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance
$86.3 Billion committed in FY2018–FY2026
- Agency
- Veterans Benefits Administration, Veterans Affairs, Department of
- Assistance
- Direct Payments With Unrestricted Use
- CFDA number
- 64.028
- What it does
- To assist beneficiaries in receiving educational benefits and training and to help service members adjust to civilian life after separation from military service, assist in the recruitment and retention of highly qualified personnel in the active and reserve components in the Armed Forces by providing education benefits, and to provide educational opportunities to the dependents of certain service members and veterans.
- Who benefits
- As stated above under Applicant Eligibility
- Who applies
- What follows is not a complete list of eligibility requirements. For more information on the latest changes to the Post-9/11 GI Bill go to the VA web-site address listed below. Individuals who entered active duty after September 10, 2001 may be eligible for the Post-9/11 GI Bill. Individuals can use the Post-9/11 GI Bill after serving 90 days on active duty (excluding entry level and skill training). Only periods of active duty under title 10 will be used to establish eligibility for the Post 9/11 GI Bill. A high school diploma or equivalency certificate is always required for eligibility. Individuals who are eligible for the Montgomery GI Bill – Active Duty (Chapter 30), or the Montgomery GI Bill – Selected Reserve (Chapter 1606) will have to make an irrevocable election to relinquish eligibility under one of those benefit programs to establish eligibility under the Post-9/11 GI Bill. The dependent children of a person who died in the line of duty while serving as a member of the Armed Forces may be eligible to use benefits under the Marine Gunnery Sergeant John David Fry Scholarship provision of the Post-9/11 GI Bill. The spouse and/or child(ren) of a veteran or service member may be eligible for the Post 9/11 GI Bill if the veteran or service member transfers entitlement to those dependents. Eligibility to transfer entitlement to dependents is determined by the Department of Defense.
- Authorized by
- Public Law 110-252; 38 U.S.C. § 33
- Program site
- https://www.va.gov/education ↗
Committed by fiscal year
* FY2026 is year-to-date — the fiscal year is still in progress, so its total is still filling in. The striped band and dashed line mark that provisional stretch.
Recipients
This program's money is paid out as non-itemized direct payments — USAspending records it under a single aggregate, so individual recipients aren't listed. The dollars and agencies above are complete; the recipient roster isn't part of the public record for programs like this.
How to read these numbers
- Committed through this program
Money committed under this assistance listing (its CFDA program), counted in the year each action happened.
- How it's paid
Most programs pay out one way — a grant, or a direct payment to individuals; the flow bar only appears when a program genuinely mixes types.
- Some recipients aren't itemized
For entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, the government reports one aggregate instead of naming tens of millions of people, so the recipient roster isn't part of the public record.
- Awards, counted once
An award count is the number of distinct awards with at least one action that year — each counted once, however many times it was amended.
- The colored bars
Every bar on this page splits by how the money moves:
Direct payments