May 01, 2024

Warren, Carper, Kaine, Davis Urge the Release of Data From Defense Department’s Postsecondary Education Complaint System

DoD has not released comprehensive data from PECS since 2015

“Accurate data and information is needed to fully understand the problems service members, veterans, and their families are facing in the TA and MyCAA programs.” 

Text of Letter (PDF)

Washington, D.C. – Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Chair of the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Personnel, Tom Carper (D-Del.), a U.S. Navy veteran and the last Vietnam War veteran serving in the United States Senate, Tim Kaine (D-Va.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Personnel, and Representative Don Davis (D-N.C.), a member of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Military Personnel, are calling on the Department of Defense (DoD) to release data on the Postsecondary Education Complaint System (PECS), a centralized database to track complaints against schools who participate in the Tuition Assistance (TA) and My Career Advancement Account Scholarship (MyCAA) program.

The DoD’s TA program was established in 1985 to help cover the costs of voluntary education programs as a benefit for service members, while MyCAA is the corresponding tuition benefit for military spouses. Service members and members of the Coast Guard are able to use TA to pay expenses for undergraduate, graduate, vocational, licensure, certificate, and language courses, or to complete their high school education. MyCAA provides military spouses up to $4,000 to help reduce the cost of a license, certification, or Associate's degree. 

The PECS program was launched in 2014 in response to reports of schools targeting service members, veterans, and their families with misleading and deceptive recruiting tactics. In Fiscal Year (FY) 2014 and FY 2015, DoD released PECS Summary Reports that analyzed complaint data to help shed light on problems servicemembers and their families were experiencing when using their educational benefits. DoD described the data as “vitally important” and a “means for improving the overall educational experience for Service members.”

However, DoD has not released comprehensive data from PECS since 2015. 

“Because the DoD has stopped releasing summary reports, it is unclear how many complaints have been filed in recent years, let alone any critical information about what problems service members and their spouses might be facing and at which schools or institutions,” wrote the lawmakers. 

Accurate data and information is needed to fully understand the problems service members, veterans, and their families are facing in the TA and MyCAA programs. The lawmakers are calling on DoD to begin publishing annual PECS Summary Reports again and explain their administration of PECS by May 15, 2024. 

Senator Warren has been a strong advocate for ensuring quality benefits for servicemembers and accountability for predatory practices against veterans: 

  • In February 2021, Senator Warren applauded the Department of Education's decision to collect the approximately $22.3 million that student loan servicer Navient (formerly Sallie Mae) owed to taxpayers after massively overcharging the federal government and servicemembers in a years-long scandal.

  • In October 2019, Senators Warren and Blumenthal sent a letter to then-Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and Major General Mark Brown, then-Chief Operating Officer of the Office of Federal Student Aid, urging them not to renew the Office of Federal Student Aid's contract with the student loan servicer Navient Corporation. Navient was known to overcharge servicemembers on their student loans and had failed to repay millions to the Education Department

  • In April 2019, Senator Warren applauded the Department of Defense’s new agreement with the Department of Education to automatically exempt servicemembers from interest on their federal student loans while serving in war zones.

  • In March 2019, Senators Warren and Murray led a letter of support for the then-newly-proposed DOD and Department of Education data matching agreement, which would allow eligible military student loan borrowers in combat zones to be automatically exempt from interest on their federal student loans while serving in war zones.

  • In October 2017, Senator Warren joined Senator Durbin (D-Ill.), and four other senators to introduce legislation that would help put an end to the for-profit college industry's aggressive recruiting of veterans, service members, and their families. 

  • In August 2017, Senator Warren applauded the passage of an expanded GI Bill, which included educational benefits to families of fallen servicemembers. 

  • In May 2017, Senator Warren penned an op-ed in the Boston Globe reiterating her commitment to protecting military personnel and calling on the federal government to make good on promises made to servicemembers and veterans. 

  • In April 2017, Senator Warren led fellow senators in a letter to then-Secretary of Defense James Mattis raising concerns with the Department of Defense's (DoD) recently announced policy to ensure regulatory compliance by educational institutions that receive DoD Tuition Assistance (TA) funds to educate women and men of the armed services. 

  • In March 2016, Senator Warren sent a letter and “Questions for the Record” to then-Acting Secretary of Education Dr. John King, seeking answers about the Education Department’s (ED’s) flawed oversight of student loan servicers’ compliance with the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act. 

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