GI Bill

In one example he recounts, a war veteran eligible for benefits under the GI Bill was not able to get a loan in Flint, Mich., because local lenders weren’t willing to make them in Black neighborhoods.

Programs like the GI Bill, celebrated as America’s first “color-blind” policy, ostensibly extended benefits to all veterans.

Post-9/11 GI Bill benefits, however, are reserved only for those with a fully honorable discharge.

Those low tuition costs and high earnings — along with his GI Bill benefits and a federal Pell Grant — will enable Roa to graduate debt free and transform the future of his family.

Rao, for one, could not afford to go straight to college from high school and did not want to go into debt, so he enlisted in the Navy — in part to qualify for the GI Bill benefits that would pay for his education.