Educational Benefits

‘GI Bill® is a registered trademark of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). More information about education benefits offered by VA is available at the official U.S. government Web site at https://www.benefits.va.gov/gibill."

There are important steps that you, the student, and DACC, as the certifying official, need to follow to ensure that you receive your benefits in a timely manner, and that you do not receive over-payments that you are required to repay to the Dept. of Veteran Affairs. These steps are as follows:

• When you apply or renew your benefits, all correspondence with the State and Federal Agencies is with you the veteran.  DACC is not sent copies of your approvals or your certificates of eligibility. If you do not bring these in when you receive them, we will not know that you have benefits available to you.
• Veteran's Online Application for GI Bill® Benefits click here
• Each semester when you enroll you must:
  1. Inform your academic counselor that you are a veteran with educational benefits. They will complete their section of your enrollment certification form.
  2. Provide a copy of your schedule and the DACC Veteran's Enrollment Certification Form signed by a DACC Academic counselor to the Financial Aid office..

Contact the Counseling office at (217) 443-8750 to determine who is your academic counselor. The DACC Veteran's Enrollment Certification Form can be printed from this site (click here VACERT). The courses you enroll in, must go toward the degree or certificate you are pursuing. If you are not in courses that meet the curriculum guide for the degree you are pursuing, these classes will not be certified. Regardless which enrollment method you choose ( by phone, in person, via the Internet) you must follow the above procedures before your benefits will be certified.

If you withdraw, drop, or change credit hours in any way after your initial enrollment, you must contact the DACC Financial Aid office immediately so that we can contact the Dept. of Veterans Affairs to notify them of the change in hours. If this is not done, it will result in an overpayment of your benefits and the Dept. of Veterans Affairs will take aggressive action to reclaim the overpayment. The Dept. of Veterans Affairs has a number of actions they pursue to reclaim overpayments, one of which is withholding future benefits.

If you have questions regarding the amount of your entitlement, how many months you have left, or other inquiries, please call the Dept. of Veterans Affairs Regional Office at 1-888-442-4551. The school does not have access to this information.

All enrollment certifications are transmitted to the Dept. of Veteran Affairs office in St. Louis, MO. Please take into consideration that the St. Louis Office assists 15 states in their region. At times, there is an over-abundance of information sent to them and they may be back logged. This may result in your hours not being available on the WAVE or the telephone electronic certification number. If this happens, please call us to ensure that the hours have been certified. After we have confirmed certification, you will need to call the VA Regional Office to certify your enrollment. For the contact numbers click here.

You will self certify each month that you are enrolled in college at the Web Automated Verification of Enrollment (WAVE). Click here.

If you are eligible for another benefit program as well as the Post-9/11 GI Bill® (Chapter 33), you should review the side-by-side comparison of benefits under each program.

While each individual's situation is different, this may help you determine which of the programs provide the most benefit for your individual situation. You should now have enough information to decide whether you want to apply for the Post-9/11 GI Bill® or another benefit program. Remember, if you give up another program to receive the Post-9/11 GI Bill®, it is an irrevocable choice - this means that once you have selected the Post-9/11 GI Bill®, you cannot switch back to the program you gave up. At this time, you also will have to determine which school you will apply to for enrollment.

Click here to visit the GI Bill® web page "Road Map for Success"