What North Carolina’s New Military Education Benefits Could Mean for You
If starting or finishing a degree has been on your mind, two new military education benefits in North Carolina could make that next step more affordable.
Here’s what you need to know.
A military community that’s growing
The UNC System now serves a record 23,000 military-affiliated students, a 6% increase from last year. That growth reflects a community of service members, veterans and military spouses looking for flexible ways to earn a degree and move toward their next goal.
Two changes that could lower your costs
Here’s the short version:
HB 373, the Military Tuition Assistance Act, allows institutions to reduce tuition to align with federal Military Tuition Assistance caps. For many active-duty students, that could bring their out-of-pocket tuition costs down to zero.
SB 118, the Residency Expansion, allows eligible veterans to receive in-state tuition no matter where they live. That opens the door for more veterans who may have assumed earning a degree in North Carolina would be too expensive.
Support beyond tuition
Understanding which benefits apply to you, and how to use them, can feel complicated. UNC Charlotte’s Military & Veteran Services helps military-affiliated students navigate education benefits, certification requirements, in-state tuition and other resources throughout their college experience.
If you work for an organization within UNC Charlotte’s Tuition Benefit Partnership, you might have access to even more financial assistance for your education.
What that support can look like
Policy changes matter, but their real impact is easier to see through students like Carlos Hernandez-Rivera and Matthew Hampton.
Carlos knows what it takes to balance military service, school and a career. An Army Reserve dental assistant, he earned his Bachelor of Science in Nursing from UNC Charlotte and recently passed his RN boards. Today, he works in the Pediatric ICU at Atrium Health Levine Children’s Hospital.
Tuition assistance from the Army Reserve, along with support from Atrium Health, helped ease the financial pressure of earning his degree.
“It means so much to me,” Carlos said. “It’s so meaningful because these employers care about you and they care about you succeeding and growing.”
For Carlos, nursing is about more than building a career. Growing up, he often translated for his immigrant parents during doctor’s appointments. Those experiences shaped his goal of becoming a nurse practitioner who can advocate for patients facing language barriers.
“I just hope to fill in that gap one day for someone,” he said.
Matthew, a systems administrator in the Air National Guard, is pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in Computer Science at UNC Charlotte with plans to build a career in cybersecurity. The cost of his entire degree is covered.
“I didn’t want debt. That was my main reason for enlisting,” he said. “Now I’m getting better at my job and getting a degree, without loans hanging over my head.”
What Matthew learns in class often connects directly to his work. His networking courses, for example, reflect the systems work he does while maintaining and deploying services in the field.
His advice to other service members considering college is simple: “Do it. It’ll change your life.”
The takeaway
Removing cost barriers doesn’t just make a degree possible, it makes finishing one more likely. For veterans and service members like Carlos and Matthew, that shift means less time worrying about tuition bills and more time focused on the goals that brought them back to the classroom in the first place: a nursing career built on advocacy, a cybersecurity career built without debt, and a future shaped by the discipline they carried in with them.