Massachusetts Academic Credit for Military Training and Protection for Students Called to Duty

Two sections of chapter 15A do quiet, practical work that a veteran student will use more often than most of the tax provisions in this file. Section 42 is about credit. The council shall develop and adopt a written policy requiring each public institution of higher education to develop written policies and procedures governing the evaluation of a student's military occupation, military training, coursework and experience, to determine whether academic credit shall be awarded. The council's policy may require that the occupation, training, experience or courses meet the standards of the American Council on Education or equivalent standards. The council may also require institutions to standardise credit-by-exam equivalencies for exams funded through the Department of Defense. Two limits are stated in the same section. The credit is awarded based on each institution's admissions standards and consistent with the mission of the public higher education system, so this is a duty to evaluate rather than a guarantee of credit. And the evaluation is institution by institution, so two campuses may reach different answers on the same DD Form 214 and Joint Services Transcript. The most useful sentence is the last one. Each public institution of higher education shall designate a single point of contact for a student who is enrolled there and who is also a veteran, as defined in clause Forty-third of section 7 of chapter 4, to conduct the evaluation and determination. One named person, not a referral loop. A veteran should ask for that person by reference to section 42 if the registrar's office cannot say who it is. Section 43 is about protection, and it is wider than section 42 in an important way: it reaches private institutions too. No student at a postsecondary institution shall incur academic or financial penalties by virtue of performing military service on behalf of the United States. A student who enrols in an academic course but cannot complete it because they are called to or enlist in active duty, as defined in section 1 of chapter 15E, has the option to complete the course at a later date without penalty, or to withdraw from the course with a full refund of fees and tuition paid. If the course is no longer available on the student's return, the student shall be permitted to complete a replacement course for equivalent credit without penalty. If the student withdraws, the record shall reflect that the withdrawal is due to active duty. Subsection (b) says the section applies to all postsecondary institutions including the public system, private occupational schools as defined in section 263 of chapter 112, and private colleges, universities and other institutions of higher learning. A student at a private college in Massachusetts has this right, and a student at a trade or occupational school has it too. Four things in section 43 are worth naming because students give them away without knowing they have them. The choice belongs to the student, not the institution. Complete later, or withdraw with a full refund, at the student's election. The refund is of fees and tuition paid, not of tuition alone. Given how Massachusetts institutions split the bill, that distinction is most of the money. A replacement course must be allowed where the original has gone, for equivalent credit and without penalty. An institution cannot leave a returning student stranded by retiring a course. And the transcript must say why. A withdrawal recorded as due to active duty does not read to a future admissions office or employer the way an unexplained withdrawal does. The one thing section 43 does not address is federal financial aid. A student who withdraws mid-term may face a return-of-funds calculation under federal rules that Massachusetts law cannot override, and the full refund of institutional charges does not resolve a federal aid repayment. Raise that with the financial aid office at the same time as invoking section 43. Note that section 43 turns on being called to or enlisting in active duty rather than on being a veteran, so it protects a student who has never served before, on the day they enlist.