Missouri Wartime Veteran’s Survivors Grant

Section 173.234 is the survivor education benefit, and its defining feature is a headcount cap rather than a dollar cap. Within the limits appropriated, the coordinating board for higher education awards annually up to twenty-five grants to survivors of qualifying military members, statewide. Twenty-five. A grant continues annually to an eligible recipient who achieves and maintains a cumulative grade point average of at least 2.5 on a four-point scale. The statute anticipates that this will not be enough and says what happens. If the waiting list of eligible survivors exceeds fifty, the coordinating board may petition the general assembly to expand the quota, and if the quota is not expanded, the eligibility of survivors on the waiting list is extended. So a survivor who qualifies keeps their place rather than ageing out while waiting, but may wait years for a grant that exists on paper today. A qualifying military member is any member of the military of the United States, whether active duty, reserve or National Guard, who served after September 11, 2001 during time of war, who was a Missouri resident when first entering military service or at the time of death or injury, and who either died or was injured as a result of combat action, or whose death or injury was certified by a Department of Veterans Affairs medical authority to be attributable to an illness or accident that occurred while serving in combat, or who became eighty percent disabled as a result of injuries or accidents sustained in combat action after September 11, 2001. Read that last route carefully. The eighty percent figure is tied to combat injuries specifically, not to a combined rating from any source, and the veteran does not have to have died. An eligible student is the natural, adopted or stepchild of a qualifying military member who is less than twenty-five years of age and who was a dependent at the time of death or injury or within five years after the injury, or the spouse who was the spouse at the time of death or injury or within five years after. The five-year window after injury is generous and easy to miss: a marriage or a dependency that began after the injury still counts if it began within five years of it. Eligibility must be certified by the Missouri Veterans' Commission, not by the school and not by the coordinating board. That certification is the first step, not the last. The award is: an amount not to exceed the actual tuition charged at the approved institution, an allowance of up to two thousand dollars per semester for room and board, and the actual cost of books up to a maximum of five hundred dollars per semester. The room and board and book allowances are per semester, which several published summaries report as annual figures. "Tuition" is defined in subsection 1(8) as tuition or incidental fees charged for attendance as a resident of this state, and the grant may not exceed the amount of tuition charged a Missouri resident at the University of Missouri-Columbia. A survivor at a more expensive institution is capped at the Mizzou resident rate. The grant is for Missouri public institutions only, it runs only while the survivor is enrolled in a programme leading to a certificate or an associate or baccalaureate degree, and it ends at the first baccalaureate degree regardless of age. A survivor may transfer between approved public institutions without losing entitlement, and the board adjusts the amount.