By Dave Masaitis
In Motion Staff Writer
A military veteran cumulatively spends months to years in military classrooms, depending on their level of specialization and the duration of their career. They spend time studying, testing and learning just like their peers who went to college. And in most military schools the grading scales are more stringent than the typical college. Anything below a 70 percent is a failure.
For some extremely specialized schools, failure means returning back to a unit empty-handed, with no future opportunities to achieve that skill or qualification. Veterans represent a professional community that constantly demands that its membership strive to be smarter, more adaptive and more capable.
It would seem absurd then that veterans receive so few credit hours of transfer credit when they enter college after the military. Some never knew that they could transfer credit. Ryan Kirby, a 4.0 student at DSC and former Army Aviation mechanic only recently found out, saying, “I had absolutely no idea. No one ever told me it was possible.”
With many veterans transferring less than 12 credit hours, they are questioning the validity of the evaluation process. Much of the credit transferred counts only as elective credit, like Military Science. Core requisite skills like writing still do not transfer.
For professionals like Kirby, this can be very frustrating. He states, “We learn a lot of professional skills while we’re in the military. We write awards, memos and procedural manuals. We fix aircraft and missile systems. All of that, yet none of it counts.”
His frustration is shared by other veterans, who agree that perhaps it is time to reevaluate the way professional skills from the military transfer into academic credit. It is at least worth a discussion.
Writer’s Note: Veterans! Please write in, and share ideas on what you would like to see in this column. This is your column too! Email Dave at david_masaitis@daytonastate.edu and say what you think!