The Air Force is not discussing cuts or changes to tuition assistance, Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force James Cody said in a video posted online Thursday.
“There are no specific discussions going on right now about anything to do with tuition assistance or educational benefits from within the department,” Cody told an audience of enlisted airmen at Fort Meade, Maryland, in the video, in response to an airman’s question about whether such benefits might be cut or improved.
The Military Compensation and Retirement Modernization Commission also in January proposed several changes to education benefits, such as increasing how many years someone must serve before transferring Post-9/11 GI Bill benefits to a dependent, and ending housing stipend payments to dependents using transferred education benefits.
Cody said the Air Force is currently analyzing those proposals, along with the other services. The Defense Department will make its recommendations to President Obama on the commission’s proposals, Cody said, and Congress may or may not act on them. But he said those proposals aren’t from the Air Force.
Cody also reminded technical sergeants hoping to make E-7 that the first master sergeant board will begin in May, but sought to reassure them that no new requirements or expectations have been added as a result of moving to a board process.
“We haven’t added anything in to what was required before,” Cody said. “Nothing. We expect our airmen to be working hard, doing their very best, and we’re going to acknowledge that by looking at their records in a board and making sure we get the order right in who we promote.”
Cody said he doesn’t think the Air Force has been promoting the wrong people to master sergeant in the past, but he said previous tests have shown a board process would promote people in a different order.
Only the top 60 percent of eligible tech sergeants in each career field will meet the board, the Air Force said last year.
