More than half of all students receiving GI Bill benefits last year attended public colleges and universities, which were among the largest recipients of the roughly $5 billion that the Department of Veterans Affairs doled out in annual education benefits, according to VA data.
Specifically, about 59 percent of GI Bill students attended public schools; about 21 percent attended private schools and 19 percent attended for-profit schools, according to VA data for 2019, the most recent year for which it is available.
Among the Department of Veterans Affairs' list of schools with the most GI Bill recipients, American Military University, a for-profit school owned by the American Public University System, topped the list with more than 17,000 students enrolled.
The next up was the University of Maryland Global Campus, a state school that offers online coursers available to students anywhere in the world.
Also included in the top five was Liberty University, a private evangelical Christian university in Lynchburg, Virginia, that includes many students who take courses online.
Here’s a rundown of the top 20 schools ranked by the total number of GI Bill students attending each school.
