ARLINGTON, Va. - When it comes to the hustle-and-bustle of preparing for college, the last thing anyone - including soldiers - wants is to get the “runaround” when registering for classes and applying for tuition assistance.
Beginning Oct. 1, Guard members will no longer have to worry about these issues as they integrate into the Army’s online, one-stop portal to manage their federal TA and educational activities.
“[GoArmyEd] will streamline the whole registration, grading and reporting process for the schools and eliminate the runaround for soldiers,” said Thomas Slaughter, senior education services specialist for the National Guard.
“Adding the Guard to GoArmyEd completes the Army’s vision of an enterprise education system that serves every soldier, regardless of their … component,” said Ileen Rogers, director of the Army Continuing Education System.
Slaughter said it has been a series of steps to bring in the Guard, and when the program originally was conceived in the ‘80s, “all three Army components had their own independent systems in place to manage their own tuition assistance.”
“The biggest problem with having three TA systems was with Guardsmen or Reservists who would be called to active duty,” Slaughter said, “and if it wasn’t a deployment and you wanted to continue taking classes, then you’d have to switch from the Guard system to the active duty system, and vice-versa when you came off active duty.”
“There were a lot of problems with that,” Slaughter said. “If you wanted your TA before the class started, often you were out of luck and either had to pay out of pocket or wait to attend school again until the system caught up to you.”
He added that GoArmyEd takes care of all of those problems, taking away the burden of having to pay out of pocket or up front.
“The way the system worksm, is a soldier goes into the portal and signs up for classes by filling out a TA form similar to what they have now, and once it is approved online, it’s a bill to the Army,” Slaughter said. “They then print that form and take it to the school to register for classes.
The school then takes that form as payment, billing the Army and then the Army pays the bill.”
Slaughter said soldiers who have classes that begin before Oct. 1 will continue to use the old system to register for classes, and for those that begin after that date will be done through GoArmyEd.
According to an Army release, Army Guard members will begin receiving familiarization training on the new GoArmyEd portal system starting June 4.
“There is also a full training program on the GoArmyEd portal that soldiers can go through on their own,” Slaughter said, “to train up on how to use the portal once they log in and create a username and password.”
The relese also said on Aug. 1, Guard soldiers who have GoArmyEd accounts already set up could start requesting TA for courses.
The system is not only a benefit for the soldier, but for the Army as a whole.
“For the Army, this will be more cost effective because they will have more control,” he said. “This also makes it easier for the colleges, [as they] will no longer have to send out grade reports to soldiers because it will all be done through the portal online.”
So come fall, soldiers looking to achieve their higher education goals will begin to have less stress and less of a runaround when registering and paying for classes via the Army’s federal tuition assistance program.
For more information go to https://www.goarmyed.com/.