Community Colleges Rarely Graduate the Veterans they Recruit
SAN DIEGO—In the main room of a onetime fraternity house at the edge of San Diego State University, a small group of students labors quietly, laser-focused, over textbooks and laptops.
This is the Veterans House, its door propped open by a spent artillery shell. It’s where some of the more than 800 military veterans enrolled here study between classes as a flat-screen TV broadcasts SportsCenter with the volume muted, or help each other out with particularly challenging assignments.
At the heart of the campus is yet another lounge for student-veterans. Called the Bunker, it’s draped with camouflage and decorated with service symbols, insignia, and vintage recruiting posters. It’s inside the Veterans Center, a warren of offices filled with advisers and counselors—most military veterans themselves—who cut through paperwork and other potentially career-ending distractions.
This level of support helps more than three-quarters of the veterans at San Diego State graduate within four years, the university reports, nearly double the national average. That’s in spite of extra challenges confronting student-veterans, who are usually older than traditional-aged students and more likely to be juggling college with families, jobs, and service-related disabilities, and who often face significantly more red tape.
“They can do it all here,” said Chaz Painter, a former Navy gunner’s mate who had just gotten help at the Veterans Center with some forms. “You don’t
