This article first appeared in EdSource.

Years of collaboration between California State University and local community colleges has resulted in an enrollment bump of military-affiliated students, according to recent data from the university system. 

The number of military-affiliated students, which includes veterans and their family members, attending a Cal State campus has increased by 17% between 2019 and 2025. In comparison, CSU’s overall enrollment grew 2.9% in that period. CSU officials reported that 7,369 veterans or active service members, and roughly twice as many dependents of veterans, attended CSU in 2025. 

One of the many challenges service members transitioning from military to civilian life face is navigating the complex world of higher education and the array of financial benefits available to veterans. Helping veterans and their family members transition from community college, where more than 80% of student veterans transfer from, to a four-year university is critical, said Marshall Thomas, CSU’s director of Veteran Affairs.

“We play a really active role in that transition. It’s a partnership, certainly, between the community colleges and us,” Thomas said. 

The rise in veteran student enrollment has been driven primarily by a 22% increase in enrollment of veterans’ spouses and children, who are eligible for federal financial assistance. Thomas, who is a Marine Corps veteran, believes many more dependents of veterans have been attending classes at CSU campuses in recent years because the children of service members who fought in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are now entering an age when they can take advantage of the financial benefits.

There are a range of federal and state benefits afforded to veterans to pay for college. The Post 9/11 GI Bill covers the full cost of tuition and fees for public, in-state universities, in addition to money for housing and books, for those who are eligible. Dependents of veterans who have died or been permanently disabled due to their service are also eligible for benefits for up to 36 months. The state benefit, known as the CalVet Fee Waiver, also covers tuition and fees of veterans’ dependents who attend CSU or other public postsecondary institutions. 

Enrollment of student veterans and active service members has jumped 6% since 2019. 

“Those kinds of warm handoffs between systems have been really effective,” Thomas said. “I work for the CSU, but community college students are my students also, because they’re going to try and come here.”

Helping veterans transition to student life

All of CSU’s 22 campuses have a Veterans Resource Center (VRC), which helps community college students transfer to four-year programs and provides academic support and community for a student population that often has an unconventional path to higher education.

Alex Ortega, who leads the VRC at Cal State Fullerton, has seen veterans struggle with a lack of community after they leave the military. 

“A lot of these students already feel behind. They already feel like their peers are passing them,” Ortega said. He added that the veteran students in his program have an average GPA of 3.15.

After six years of active duty service in the Navy, Erica Campos started her higher education at Cypress College and is now pursuing a master’s degree in social work at Cal State Fullerton.

Ortega said that many veterans attending Cal State Fullerton are first-generation college students and are entering a four-year program in their mid-20s, later than their peers who are attending the university just out of high school. 

Erica Campos is one of those first-generation college students who benefited from Ortega’s support. After Campos left the military, following six years of active duty with the Navy, she didn’t know what benefits were available to her as a veteran.

Campos first attended Cypress College and was later connected to Ortega and his team at Cal State Fullerton’s VRC, who helped her navigate the complex world of financial assistance available to veterans and their families. 

“I’m grateful for the Veterans Resource Center because it gave me a community, it gave me people, it gave me resources,” Campos said. “And then I got to pay it forward essentially, and teach those incoming students what those benefits are.”

Campos now works with female veterans at the VRC as a graduate assistant while pursuing her master’s degree in social work. Female veterans don’t have as many opportunities to connect with other women who served as their male counterparts do, and at the VRC, Campos hopes to create a community for women veterans. 

Thomas, CSU’s Veteran Affairs director, said one of the core missions of VRCs is to create clear pathways for this unique student population to access higher education. 

“The United States has been creating veterans for 251 years now. We’re not going to stop,” he said. “We need to be prepared to work with them and their dependents as they come to us, and they will.”

April 5, 2026

EdSource is California’s largest independent newsroom focused on education.