Education Benefits for Veterans in American Samoa

There is one public college in the territory, American Samoa Community College, and the veterans education picture there is almost entirely federal. The resident tuition rule is federal: 38 U.S.C. 3679(c), first enacted as Section 702 of the Veterans Access, Choice, and Accountability Act, requires a public institution to charge the in-state rate to covered GI Bill users or lose VA approval, and 38 U.S.C. 101(20) makes American Samoa a State for that purpose. The rule today is wider than the college's own policy page says. That page, still online in 2026, prints the original 2014 terms: a Chapter 30 or Chapter 33 user must enroll within three years of discharge from a period of active duty of 90 days or more, a transferee within three years of the transferor's discharge, and a Fry Scholarship beneficiary within three years of the service member's death. Section 1005 of Public Law 116-315 removed every one of those windows for terms beginning on or after August 1, 2021. A covered individual now gets the resident rate if they live in American Samoa while enrolled, however long ago they left the service, and the rule covers Chapter 30 Montgomery GI Bill, Chapter 31 Veteran Readiness and Employment, Chapter 33 Post-9/11 GI Bill (including transferred benefits and the Fry Scholarship) and Chapter 35 dependents' educational assistance. Public Law 119-55 added Chapter 1606 Selected Reserve Montgomery GI Bill users for terms beginning on or after August 1, 2026, which matters here because the territory's service members are Army Reserve. Eligibility continues while the student stays continuously enrolled, apart from regularly scheduled breaks. If the college quotes a three-year window, point the business office to 3679(c) as amended; the federal statute controls, and the policy page simply was not updated. One line in that policy is specific to this territory: the college extends the resident rate to eligible GI Bill beneficiaries who are not U.S. citizens or nationals, with supporting documentation submitted with the application. That sentence only makes sense in a place where citizenship, national status, and residency are three different things. The territory's own student financial aid program is at chapter 25 of title 16. It is not a veterans program and contains no veterans preference. Section 16.2507 limits awards to an applicant who is a United States national, a United States citizen, an American Samoan as defined in 41.0202, or a permanent resident of American Samoa, who is a legal resident of American Samoa, and who has been accepted to or is attending an educational institute. A veteran can apply on the same footing as anyone else and gains nothing from having served. What does not exist here, in contrast with almost every state in this catalog: there is no territorial tuition waiver for veterans, no waiver for children or spouses of veterans who died in service or are rated permanently and totally disabled, and no territorial education bonus. The Army benefits library reaches the same conclusion, recording that American Samoa has no territorial education programs for veterans. There is also no National Guard in American Samoa. The territory is one of two, with the Northern Mariana Islands, that has none. Every state Guard tuition assistance program, state education benefit tied to Guard service, and Guard-specific waiver is therefore unavailable, and so is the state Guard route into the federal programs that assume one. What American Samoa has is Army Reserve detachments; the VA clinic itself sits in the Fiatele Teo Army Reserve Building. So the education plan for a veteran here is the federal one. Post-9/11 GI Bill, Montgomery GI Bill, Veteran Readiness and Employment, the Fry Scholarship, and dependents' educational assistance are all administered from Honolulu on the same terms as anywhere else. Thirty-three veterans living in American Samoa received VA education benefits in each of fiscal years 2021, 2022, and 2023.