As Servicemembers come home from active duty they often face a choice of whether to remain in the selected active reserves, or to be part of the inactive ready reserves. Both are viable choices, but in order to remain eligible for educational benefits, most of the time a Servicemember should stay in the selected ready reserve. The selected ready reserves are the active reserves that drill once a month and who have drill duty for two weeks every year.
Serving in the United States Marine Corps Reserves is one method of maintaining eligible for various educational benefits. If you have served for 90 days or more on active duty in a contingency operation as defined as the current Afghanistan and Iraq theaters, you are eligible for educational funding to go to school. Congress made changes to the law in 2005 as part of the Ronald W. Reagan National Defense Authorization. It allowed for more funds to assist members of the reserves, including the Marine Corps Reserves, to attend college or university classes, or vocational training.
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The branch of each service, in this case the Marine Corps, and the DoD administer the Reserve Educational Administrative program. If you serve longer than 90 days, then you will be eligible for more educational funding under the program. This is an excellent program that will allow Servicemembers who opt to remain in the Marine Corps selected reserves a chance to access money to attend school. The amount of money you will be eligible for depends directly on the amount of time of consecutive active duty service you performed. Basically it is based on the formula of: for two years or more of service you can receive up to 80 percent of the active duty MGIB rate, for between one and two years of service you can get up to 60 percent, and for active duty service over 90 days but less than one year you are eligible for 40 percent of the MGIB active duty rate.
For Servicemembers who return from active duty and wish to stay in the selected reserve this can really make a difference. The money is available for anyone that served periods of active duty service in the Marine Corps Reserves, or any reserve branch, after September 11, 2001.
The nice thing about this new educational law is that it is retroactive. You can receive money for schooling you have already attended in some cases after 2001, depending on the situation.
