The College Fix

Junior Paul Salem is an average Duke student­—he buys meals from the Great Hall and does homework in Perkins Library. But unlike most of his peers, Salem is a 24-year-old trained sniper who has instructed urban sniping while serving as a Marine in Iraq and the Horn of Africa.

Since President Barack Obama’s recent deployment of troops from Iraq— approximately 90,000 in the past 18 months as of August—the University has seen an increase in veteran applications at its undergraduate and graduate schools, University Registrar Bruce Cunningham wrote in an e-mail.

But the University is not expecting veteran enrollment to increase significantly in the immediate future, said Michael Schoenfeld, vice president for public affairs and government relations.

Lieutenant Valerie VanHo, president of the Student Veterans Association at Duke and Grad ’10, said the application process is particularly difficult for active duty servicemen who want to go to college because many fill out applications and take their SATs while deployed in Iraq or on naval ships.

Duke has made some strides to improve its accessibility to veterans, but undergraduates who have served in the military are still a minority group among students on campus, Salem said.

The veterans who do attend Duke, however, are eligible to receive financial support from the University.

Last year, Duke began providing funding for veteran students by joining the Department of Veterans Affairs Yellow Ribbon Program. The program allows institutions of higher learning to enter into an agreement with the government to provide funding for veterans which the VA then matches.

Read the full story at the Duke Chronicle.

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