Guam Veterans Higher Education Benefits Act

This is the newest benefit in the Guam catalog and the largest, and it has already been rewritten. Public Law 38-099 of February 11, 2026 added Chapter 56 to Title 17, the Guam Veterans Higher Education Benefits Act, administered by the Commission on Post-Secondary Education and to be implemented no earlier than April 1, 2026. Section 61 of Public Law 38-136, the fiscal year 2027 budget act, which lapsed into law without the Governor's signature at the end of August 2026, then re-enacted the whole chapter. The Guam Code Annotated copy the courts serve was generated in April 2026 and still prints the Public Law 38-099 text. The rewrite matters most for timing. Administration moved from the Commission to the two institutions: the University of Guam Board of Regents and the Guam Community College Board of Trustees each adopt their own rules within one hundred twenty days of the act, each must begin accepting applications within sixty days after adopting them, and exemptions are processed "beginning at the next full semester" after that. On that timetable no exemption can be processed before the spring 2027 semester at the earliest, and the April 1, 2026 date that guides print is gone. Ask the institution whether its rules have been adopted before planning around a waiver. What it gives. A Qualifying Veteran, and a dependent spouse and children, if sufficient institutional capacity exists as determined by the institutions, is exempt from payment of tuition at the University of Guam and Guam Community College. At the undergraduate level the exemption is capped at a lifetime total of ninety credit hours per Qualifying Veteran, which the veteran may use or allocate to one or more eligible dependents, with no individual taking more than eighteen credit hours of exemption in a semester. At the graduate level it is a lifetime thirty credit hours, limited to master's programmes except that a professional doctoral programme may qualify if the institution's board approves it; the 2026 rewrite dropped the earlier critical workforce shortage test. Who qualifies, and this is where the residency test bites. A Qualifying Veteran must have been a resident of Guam at the time of entry into the U.S. Armed Forces and have officially declared Guam as their home of record, must be a legal resident of Guam when applying, and must have served in the active military, naval or air service and been discharged or released under conditions other than dishonorable. That definition expressly includes veterans of the Guam Combat Patrol, the United States Insular Force, Philippine Scouts of World War II, and the United States Armed Forces. Separately, a current member in good standing or a former member honorably discharged from the Guam National Guard or a Reserve Component qualifies regardless of active duty time served. A veteran who moved to Guam after service does not meet the home-of-record test. Neither does a Northern Mariana Islands resident serving in the Guam National Guard, because the residency requirements are cumulative. A dependent is a spouse, or a child who is twenty-five or younger on the first day of the semester and was claimed as a dependent on a federal income tax return filed for the preceding year. The limits are where most of the statute is, and they matter. Tuition only. Section 56102(e) defines tuition as the fees charged for enrollment in a course and expressly not student activity fees, laboratory fees, or the cost of books and instructional materials. Section 56103(b)(3) repeats it. Last money in. Section 56103(b)(6) makes the exemption available to a Qualifying Veteran only after all applicable federal veterans educational benefits and other federal tuition assistance programmes, including federal Title IV financial aid, have been fully exhausted, and § 56104(a)(3) requires you to attest to that. This is not a benefit to use alongside the Post-9/11 GI Bill. It is the thing that starts when the GI Bill runs out. Space available. The exemption is contingent on space remaining in a course after all tuition-paying students have completed registration, and shall not be granted for a course at maximum enrolment or one with a waitlist of tuition-paying students. The 2026 rewrite added a definition that makes this stricter than it looks: a "tuition-paying student" includes anyone paying with student loans, federal student aid, a scholarship, or another tuition waiver, so a veteran's exemption waits behind every other student, however funded. Section 56106(b)(2) requires the institutions to implement controls so that exemptions never displace a paying student. The chapter does not guarantee admission to any programme, course or institution. Academic conditions. A cumulative grade point average of at least 2.5 undergraduate or 3.0 graduate, satisfactory progress toward a degree or certificate, and no default on a government of Guam student loan. Repeated courses are covered for only one additional attempt. And under § 56104(c), if you withdraw from or fail a course whose tuition was waived, you must repay the waived tuition unless the institution's board waives it for good cause; the money goes into the institution's student financial aid fund. Administration is with each institution's board under § 56105, notwithstanding the Administrative Adjudication Law; the government of Guam veterans affairs entity verifies status and service on request from an institution. Each institution must report to the Legislature within ninety days of the end of each academic year on beneficiaries, credit hours exempted, credits failed or withdrawn, repayments, degree types and the value of tuition waived. The resident rate is a separate federal question. 38 U.S.C. 3679(c) applies in Guam, because 38 U.S.C. 101(20) makes each territory a State for Title 38, so the University of Guam and Guam Community College must charge the resident rate, as a condition of VA approval, to a covered individual living on Guam and using Chapter 30, 31, 33 or 35 assistance, or Chapter 1606 assistance from August 1, 2026, with no window after discharge since August 1, 2021. That is the rule for the GI Bill years before this chapter's exemption starts.