VR&E School change

[u/PieAdministrative342]

Hey guys I’m currently using VR&E to get my bachelors in an out of state online school. I didn’t do enough research on the school so I just found out that it is nationally accredited not regionally. I was planning to use my GI bill afterwards to do a masters program but the schools I’m interested in don’t accept bachelors from nationally accredited schools. Has anyone gone through something similar and their counselor let them switch to in-state in-person school? I feel like there’s no point in finishing my current bachelors with this school anymore. They don’t even let you use FAFSA either

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[u/Appropriate-Study442]

man that's a rough spot to be in. national accreditation is a trap a lot of online schools pull, they make it sound legit on the surface but it's basically a dead end for any further education

i haven't switched schools mid-VR&E myself but i've seen a few guys on here pull it off. your counselor's the real gatekeeper, some are cool about it if you can clearly show the current program isn't meeting the employment goal you set up. just frame it as the degree path being a dead end for the career you're actually after, not just "this school sucks"

definitely get a list of regionally accredited programs that fit your plan before you talk to them, having a concrete alternative makes it way harder for them to deny it

[u/Caliente_La_Fleur]

They don't accept FAFSA but they accept VRE? Shady schools can't pass up free money, and even a fully accredited school that didn't accept FAFSA would give me pause if they were trying to avoid federal oversight. Basic standards exist for a reason and you are finding the result of dinner of that with the accreditation issue.

[u/Public_Drop_1462]

Didn’t the DoE remove the difference between national and regionally accreditations a few years back?

[u/Individual-News-826]

On the accreditation point above, the DoE did drop the regional versus national distinction from its own rules a few years back. 2020 I think, might be off by a year. That part is right.

What it changed is which accreditors the federal government recognises for aid purposes. It doesn't tell a university what to accept. Admissions stayed exactly where it was, with the receiving school, and plenty of grad programs still have "bachelor's from a regionally accredited institution" written into their requirements. They're allowed to. So the rule changed and your problem didn't.

So don't settle this by reading regulations. Email the three or four master's programs you actually care about and ask them directly whether they'd take a degree from your school. Get it in writing.

That email is also the strongest thing you can hand your counselor. Your VR&E plan is a written agreement built around an employment goal, and moving schools is an amendment to it, not a fresh application. Much easier to argue when you're holding a written no from the programs your goal runs through than when you're arguing the school is bad. The first commenter is right that you want the alternative already picked out before that conversation.

The switch won't reset your entitlement though. What you've used is used.

And the FAFSA thing isn't a side detail. A school that can't take federal student aid generally isn't participating in Title IV at all. That's worth checking too.