Nebraska Active Selected Reserve Tuition Credit

Sections 80-901 to 80-903 give a member of a Nebraska-based unit of the Active Selected Reserve a credit against resident tuition at any state-supported university, college or community college in Nebraska. The credit is seventy-five percent of resident tuition for a diploma, certificate, associate degree or baccalaureate degree programme, and fifty percent for a graduate or professional degree programme. Two of its features are unusual in opposite directions. There is no lifetime limit. Section 80-902(2) says so in one sentence. The entitlement continues as long as the member maintains satisfactory service in the Active Selected Reserve and pursues a course of study in a manner satisfying the institution's normal requirements. A reservist can take a certificate, then an associate degree, then a bachelor's, then a master's, and the credit runs through all of it. Almost every comparable state programme in this catalog caps the benefit in credit hours, semesters or dollars. And there is a hard headcount. Section 80-902(3) provides that the entitlement shall not be granted to more than two hundred individuals in any calendar year. Not two hundred new awards on top of continuing ones: two hundred individuals. The Department of Veterans' Affairs states that applications must be submitted annually to renew eligibility, so the two hundred places are re-contested each year. A reservist who assumes a place held last year is automatically held this year has misread the programme. The qualifying conditions are in 80-902(1): the member must have agreed to serve a minimum of three years in the reserve and must be pursuing a course of study leading to a diploma, certificate, associate degree, baccalaureate degree, graduate degree or professional degree. Non-degree coursework is outside it. Section 80-903 puts the paperwork burden squarely on the member. It is the individual's responsibility to obtain a certificate from their commanding officer attesting to satisfactory performance and to submit it to the Director of Veterans' Affairs, who checks it against the two hundred person limit, endorses it as approved and returns it to the member to present to the institution at initial enrolment. For every subsequent term the certificate is obtained and presented directly to the institution without the director's endorsement. A member who presents nothing gets nothing, and the institution has no duty to chase it. This programme is separate from, and should not be confused with, the Nebraska National Guard tuition assistance under sections 85-505 to 85-508. The Guard programme pays a higher percentage, covers private nonprofit colleges as well as public ones, and has a limit of twelve hundred members a year rather than two hundred. A Guard member uses that programme; a member of a Nebraska-based Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force or Coast Guard Reserve unit uses this one.