Congress Passes the Remote Act for Veteran Students

Congress passed the REMOTE Act for veteran students on December 21st. This law extends many of the various COVID-19 protections enacted for veterans and family members using the G.I. Bill from the end of 2021 to June 1st 2022. This is especially relevant for many veterans whose classes were converted to fully being online and would have impacted the housing rate paid out to students. As a result, veterans and family members using the GI Bill to take classes online because of COVID-19 will continue to be paid out at the resident rate.

The bill also goes on to allow for the following:

Authorizes “rounding out” which allows students to enroll in additional classes in order to be more than half-time, and get monthly housing allowance (MHA) payments, during the student’s final semester, term or academic period.

Extends all other COVID protections included in the Johnny Isakson and David P. Roe, M.D. Veterans Health Care and Benefits Improvement Act of 2020 (PL 116-315) from December 21, 2021, to June 1, 2022

For Veterans impacted by this, please continue to maintain contact with your school coordinator as they will receive updates from the VA on how to proceed.

Currently, there is nothing veterans need to do. VA will notify the schools and training facilities of this update. The VA has also published a  COVID-19 Student FAQs for your information.

For more information on this legislation visit https://benefits.va.gov/gibill/remoteact.asp.