PURSUE YOUR GOALS
The Department of Defense has approved ORU as a “DoD Tuition Assistance” user. If you are serving on active duty; continue to serve in the Army National Guard or Air National Guard; or serve on the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, or Coast Guard Reserves, you may be eligible for $250 per credit hour, with a differing maximum amount per semester based on your service component. This is an exciting time to be a veteran here at ORU as you pursue your educational goals!
To check your eligibility or for more information, please contact your unit’s education office or ORU's Military Liaison, Will Beck at wbeck@oru.edu.
Apply to ORU Now! Request Tuition Assistance
Requirements and Limitations
- Active duty servicemen and women are entitled to $250 per credit hour (undergrad or grad) up to $4,500 per fiscal year ending on September 30th. However, individual services may fund differently, and not all branches are entitled to $4,500 per year.
- Tuition Assistance (TA) may not be used for spouses or for dependent children. It may not be transferred.
- Tuition Assistance is a predominantly online recource to be used for ORU Online courses. National Guard and Reserves may be eligible to take on-campus course at ORU. Please contact your unit’s education office to check if you are eligible for on-campus courses.
- Tuition Assistance is not authorized for education beyond a master’s degree. You may not use TA at an educational level that is equal to or below any degree that you have already completed.
Eligible Expenses
Tuition assistance will cover the following expenses:
- Tuition
- Course-specific fees such as laboratory fee or online course fee
Please Note: All fees must directly relate to the specific course enrollment of the service member.
Tuition assistance will not cover the following expenses:
- Books and course materials
- Flight training fees
- Taking the same course twice
- Continuing education units (CEUs)
Branch Specifications
Air Force and Space Force
- Due to funding constraints, the Air Force has limited the total benefit per airman to $3,750 for the 2021 fiscal year, which runs from Oct. 1 2020 to Sept. 30, 2021.
- Air Force TA is limited to 124 undergraduate and 42 graduate hours total.
Army
- Soldiers can use up to $4,000 to pay for up to 16 semester hours of undergraduate or graduate coursework per fiscal year.
- The Army TA program has a total cap of 130 semester hours of undergraduate credit or the completion of a bachelor’s degree, and a separate cap of 39 hours of graduate credit or the completion of a master’s degree.
Coast Guard
- The Coast Guard screens members for TA eligibility based on satisfactory progress towards qualifications and craft proficiency and requires a positive conduct record. Selected Reservists must also be making satisfactory progress towards participation standards.
- Coast Guard members have an annual fiscal year cap of $2,250 for TA payments, equaling nine credit hours. Coast Guard TA is limited to 130 undergraduate and 40 graduate hours.
Marine Corps
- Marines must have completed 24 months of service to use TA benefits. TA is also available to reservists on continuous active duty, enlisted reservists ordered to active duty 120 days or longer, and to reserve officers ordered to active duty for two years or longer.
- The fiscal year 2021 limit on Marine Corps TA benefits is $4,500.
Navy
- Sailors must complete two years of active duty before using TA benefits, and also must have completed one year at their first permanent duty station, with waivers available at the CO/OIC level.
- The Navy has a cap of $3,000 for fiscal year 2021. After running out of money in May 2019, this cap was reduced to the current level and lifetime TA for sailors is limited to 120 credit hours.