We hear the terms ‘military-friendly’ and ‘veteran-friendly’ tossed around quite often in higher education. These terms are often used to recruit veterans, their spouses, and their dependents as students into colleges and universities. But is your institution ‘military-friendly’ or ‘veteran-friendly’ if you do not actively recruit, hire, and retain veterans as employees?

What Does Military Representation Look Like on Your Campus?

How many veterans, military spouses, or dependents does your institution employ? The truth is, there are probably more than you think, but also not enough. While there is no standard ratio for how many student veterans per veteran employee an institution should exemplify, ratios like 500+ student veterans (or military-affiliated students) to 5 veteran employees is not only not ‘military-friendly’ but also vastly inefficient. There are numerous veterans working in higher education who can tell you their stories about becoming the ‘oracle’ on campus for student veteran issues, and how they became the token veteran on campus expected to solve all veteran problems, even if they did not/do not have the training or qualifications to do so.

You Don’t Have to be a Veteran to Effectively Serve Veterans

Civilians play a crucial role in helping student veterans transition from service and into the civilian world. Civilians also play crucial roles in breaking down military/civilian divides in higher education and the greater public. Yet, there are simply things that civilians will never understand having never served in the military, like culture, language, and tradition among many other things. Those 500 student veterans will not always connect with someone who does not share their lived experiences. We need civilians in higher education serving student veterans, but those civilians also need help and allies on campus. We need more veterans as employees for student veteran retention, community, representation, and future recruiting.

Hire More Military Representation

The reality is that there are over 7,000 colleges and universities in the United States with thousands of positions and careers to be filled. The military is an extremely diverse group of individuals and nearly every individual retiring from the service will need to find civilian employment. And you will hear it more and more often, as those of us who attended CCME 2023 heard from the Chief Master Sergeants of the Space Force and Air Force, and the Master Chief Petty Officer of the Coast Guard, that this is now the most educated military force in history. Not only by hiring more veterans will you have a more diverse team of employees, but you will also have a well-educated, and vastly experienced one, ready to get to work on your campus and serve your institutional mission. 

How to Hire (and Retain) More Veteran Employees

• Don’t disqualify active-duty service members, veterans, or military-spouse candidates with resume gaps.
• Reexamine your hiring structure.
• Show your veteran employees they have a dedicated space via veteran employee resource groups.
• Remind veterans that higher ed is not just a career for professors and faculty members.

Be Aware of Barriers

Remember that the structure of higher ed is dizzying for outsiders. Do you remember how long it took you to figure out the order of operations in higher ed? Are you still figuring it out? Veterans applying to careers in higher ed must learn this too. Do you know all the orders of operation of the military? (If you do, good for you, cause that is some major complexity!) Don’t expect a veteran to understand all of the orders of operation of an institution. They may not understand the difference between a dean and a provost, just as you may not understand the difference between a Chief Master Sergeant and a Technical Sergeant.

Article Topics

Job Search Advice Military Friendly Institutions Women Veterans Working as a Veteran in HigherEd Workplace Inclusion

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