2 Educational Programs for Troops Eliminated Amid Cost-Cutting Efforts at Pentagon

Yahoo

15-05-2025

Two companies that had contracts aimed at educating troops say they have suddenly had their popular programs eliminated as the Trump administration continues efforts to cut costs at the Pentagon and congressional dysfunction shortchanges the department.
Executives from a company that helped troops better utilize their tuition assistance suspect that their contract was cut by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, while leaders at a testing company that offered free military test preparation services to troops and families say their program was eliminated in the last congressional funding bill.
The revelations offer a glimpse into what public efforts by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to eliminate contracts and cut spending at the Pentagon actually look like to rank-and-file troops. The end of those programs comes on top of other changes affecting the lives of service members -- like the slow and steady reduction of child care benefits -- that are the direct result of Trump policies.
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Vantage Point Consulting, a small veteran-owned business, ran the Career Path DECIDE system that has been eliminated. CPD, according to Jeffrey Carpenter, one of the product managers behind the program, was largely aimed at helping troops be strategic about the use of their tuition assistance benefits.
Tuition assistance, or TA, is one of the premier education benefits offered by the military, enabling service members to get funding for college courses they take during their off-duty time.
However, the program's popularity also began to spell its downfall in recent years.
In 2024, then-Army Secretary Christine Wormuth told Congress that the program was a "catastrophic success" whose growing costs meant it could become unsustainable.
According to Carpenter, CPD was a "carefully designed strategy" for keeping TA in check. The program offered counseling to troops to make sure that the degrees they were pursuing were worthwhile and were in high-demand areas. It also helped keep troops away from predatory programs.
Carpenter told Military.com in an interview Wednesday that the Pentagon "really wanted to say, how do we get more out of this $750 million tuition assistance spend, and how do we avoid ... waste, fraud and abuse ... rather than just having service members randomly take courses or pick degree programs without understanding what they're doing or what the return is for taxpayers."
In a statement released Tuesday, the company noted that, in a pilot version of the program, "20% of first-time TA users shifted from low market-value programs to STEM fields like cybersecurity and engineering, critical for the defense industrial base." The term STEM refers to science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
The result, the company noted, is that not only were troops getting courses and degrees in far more marketable fields but, "by guiding service members into STEM education, CPD reduced unemployment risk for the 200,000 transitioning annually."
Instead, two weeks ago, the company was told it was done.
"So we reached out to our client, to say, 'Hey, what is this?' and they didn't even know that it had happened," Carpenter said. "This appeared to have been something that ... someone in DOGE had done without even consulting the … sponsor of the project or considering third-order impacts on counselors in the field or service members.
"That's six years of work, research and development, a lot of passionate people, many veterans, working on this, and it just all went away in one day," he added.
Carpenter said that he and his company were not offered a chance to explain what they did or to even renegotiate the roughly $2.5 million contract that, according to their statement, represented "0.33% of the DoD's $750 million TA budget."
Similarly, the top executive for Peterson's -- a test prep company -- recently told Military.com that its military test prep program for troops has also been stripped of funding and faces shut down.
Brian Coyne, the company's top executive, said Peterson's had been providing enlisted troops, their families and Defense Department civilians with a free service for "over 15 years" to improve their scores on the Armed Forces Classification Test -- a standardized exam that is often taken by service members who are looking to move into more technical or demanding jobs.
Coyne said that the program cost around $2.4 million but was being used by 30,000 people every year.
"If we're only helping 5% of them to get the advancement that they need to stay in the military, this is a program that is a return on investment to the U.S. military north of $30, $40 million just on that alone," he said.
According to Coyne, as well as some posts on social media, the program was liked by troops and, since the company halted registration on its website, it has been receiving lots of questions from disappointed and confused people who are no longer able to access the service.
"Unfortunately, this is likely just the tip of the iceberg of frustration," Coyne said in an email.
Unlike CPD, Peterson's testing program wasn't eliminated by DOGE but by lawmakers late last year. The Defense Department was forced to make trade-offs in what it funded after lawmakers punted on passing a regular budget for this year and simply extended last year's funding levels.
"I don't know exactly who had the budget cut, what level it was at," Coyne said.
A defense official confirmed to Military.com that, after "an overall organizational risk assessment was conducted ... the Peterson's Online Academic Skills Course contract will terminate on June 29, 2025, to meet the requirements of the Defense-Wide Topline Reduction."
The official went on to say that "individual military departments may have programs designed to supplement their service members' academic development."
However, both Coyne and Carpenter stressed that they had support of the military services for their efforts. The voluntary education chiefs told both executives that they were surprised at the cuts for both programs.
"There are some people fighting for this -- the voluntary education chiefs of each service ... they've sent up advocacy to try and have this reconsidered up to [the Office of Personnel Management]," Carpenter said.
"We are hopeful that once the positive impact of this program on service members is more fully understood, funding for critical parts of the system will be restored," he added.
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