Active Duty Servicemembers are often busy with their duty, and do not have a lot of time to attend classes, but despite this some Servicemembers do try. Many members of the Active duty Military find it pretty difficult, but they work to do what they can while they are on active duty, and then attend more classes when they separate or go onto the Selected Reserves. Many Servicemembers wait to go to college or attend the university until their enlistment is up. For those brave souls that work to do both, there are some options open. To support and recognize their efforts to take classes and serve on Active Duty, there are Servicemember Opportunity College Tuition Benefits. The Department of Defense has set up different programs with members of each of the different Armed Services. The partnerships form the entire Servicemember Opportunity College system.
The University and Colleges that make up the Servicemember Opportunity program are over 1700 programs strong, and they are joined together to try and make college and getting an education a priority. They are a partnership to support Servicemembers of the Armed Forces and they work to brainstorm different programs to support active duty sailors who want to attend school. Going to school full time can be near impossible for Servicemembers that Serve on Active Duty, and for this reason the SOC programs help support Servicemembers what want to attend both full time and part time. There are many different issues that Servicemembers face that try to go to university while serving on Active duty. The Department of Defense and DANTES fund the SOC association program. The Schools in the SOC program come together to pool their resources to increase the different ways for Servicemembers to attend classes successfully. The resources of all the different schools are pooled to try and find different ways to simplify and make the process easier. The Servicemember Opportunity colleges publish their own information guide, and it details the different contact information, school information and policy information about each of the different schools as well as general policies on the SOC.
More and more of the SOC member schools are establishing distance and online courses, and methods to assist the educational pursuits of the Servicemembers. It has gradually become more acceptable for Servicemembers to get courses from distance learning and online educations.
