Assistance program
Veteran Rapid Retraining Assistance Program
$308.4 Million committed in FY2021–FY2026
- Agency
- Veterans Affairs, Department of, Veterans Affairs, Department of
- Assistance
- Not Applicable
- CFDA number
- 64.130
- What it does
- The Veteran Rapid Retraining Assistance Program (VRRAP) was enacted on March 11, 2021, and reached its statutory end date for enrolling new students on December 10, 2022. VRRAP provides an eligible Veteran with up to 12 months of tuition and fees and a monthly housing allowance based on Post-9/11 GI Bill rates, to be used towards training in a covered program of education (high demand occupation, as determined by the Commission of Labor Statistics). VRRAP ends 21 months after the date of enactment and is limited to a maximum of 17,250 participants and up to $386 million. In order to be eligible for VRRAP, a Veteran must meet the following criteria: • At least 22 years of age and less than 67 years of age • Unemployed due to COVID-19 pandemic • Not eligible for GI Bill or Veteran Readiness and Employment benefits • Not enrolled in a Federal or State jobs program • Not rated as totally disabled because you cannot work • Not receiving unemployment compensation including enhanced benefits under the CARES Act, P.L. 116-136 Under VRRAP, schools are paid as follows: • 50-percent of the total amount payable is paid to the school when the eligible Veteran begins the program of education • 25-percent of the total amount payable is paid to the school when the eligible Veteran completes the program of education • 25-percent of the total amount payable is paid to the school when the eligible Veteran finds employment to a field related to the program of education within 180 days after program completion / withdrawal Education Service and the Office of Information Technology have developed two webpages with VRRAP information and resources: • https://benefits.va.gov/gibill/vrrap.asp for interested Veterans • https://benefits.va.gov/gibill/vrrap_educational_institutions.asp for educational institutions that are interested in participating in VRRAP • EDU has requested a new Assistance Listing number, to be published on SAM.gov (requested on March 29, 2021). • Single Audit Requirements: No, the Single Audit Requirements do not apply to VRRAP.
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