DANTES opens doors for military personnel

Could you learn more if you had someone to arrange educational opportunities suited to your goals, counsel you, provide study tools for major tests, and even pay for it all?

Members of the U.S. military have just that. It’s called DANTES, which stands for Defense Activity for Non-Traditional Education Support.

DANTES supports off-duty, voluntary education programs for the Department of Defense (DoD) and conducts special projects.

“We are the educational brokers for the DoD,” says Jeffrey Cropsey, Ed.D, director of DANTES. “Our responsibility is to provide funding and, in some cases, contracts by which we can bring civilian opportunities into military settings.”

Those opportunities are many and varied.

“If you look at DANTES in totality, you see that a person can come into the Service without a high school diploma, earn a GED® credential, then go on to complete their higher education,” says Cropsey. “At the end of a 20-year military career, they could even be placed as a teacher.”

Educational support for military personnel dates back to December 1941 when the War Department established the Army Institute. That Institute became the United States Armed Forces Institute (USAFI), which was responsible for education programs for the military during World War II. However, budget cuts eliminated USAFI in 1974. The Department of Defense (DoD) and Military Services proposed a streamlined organization—DANTES—in July 1974.

Today, more than 100,000 service members are actively involved in programs offered by DANTES each year.

At the basic level, DANTES provides funding for individuals to take the GED test. Often, the base where they are assigned also has preparation programs to help them. Those personnel are then encouraged to go straight into college work.

“We have arrangements with many colleges for an easy transition from a GED credential to college work,” Cropsey says. “The individuals who come into service without a high school diploma typically left school for reasons such as needing to care for their families, not necessarily academic problems. Generally speaking, our folks that need to earn a GED are pretty successful in scoring on that exam.”

DANTES pays for personnel to take college entrance exams such as the SAT, ACT, as well as DSST exams (collegelevel subject exams). They pay for tests that allow students to prove their knowledge in an area and receive college credit such as CLEP (College-Level Exam Preparation) tests and Excelsior college exams. In addition, DANTES pays for interest inventories such as Discover, and personality inventories such as the Myers Briggs Type Indicator.

Distance learning is another important aspect of DANTES since military personnel are stationed all over the world.

“We don’t create any courses,” notes Cropsey, “but we provide information, catalogs, and online help so a service member can go to our site and find resources and search for independent study programs that they might like to get involved in.”

DANTES even conducts voluntary education reviews, which are formally titled MIVER (Military Installation Voluntary Education Review). Professional reviewers look at the offerings of colleges and universities to vouch that the courses conducted on military bases are the same quality as those found on campus.

Cropsey says close to 2,000 colleges and universities are “military friendly,” meaning they cater to non-traditional students and are liberal about transferring credits from other institutions.

Educational counselors guide service members through each step of their post-secondary journey, helping them find college programs that work for them as well as certification programs.

DANTES is not even finished when personnel retire from the military. Through its Troops to Teachers program, DANTES has placed more than 10,000 service members in teaching positions around the United States in the last 14 years, primarily in math, science and technical subject areas.

“Young people are putting themselves at risk in the military,” says Cropsey. “It is a sacred trust. We want to deliver on education for those who are willing to take that risk for their country.”