February 22, 2010
By Jacey Eckhart
 
Effective immediately, the MyCAA program is temporarily halting operations. We are reviewing all procedures, financial assistance documents and the overall program. This pause will not affect approved Financial Assistance documents. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. Please check back for updates.
 
We have panicked the government.  Yay us! Now I’m not usually an anarchist, but when the My CAA program was halted earlier this week, I was positively gleeful. 

I’ve been gleeful about the program since it first opened last spring.  When the Office of the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Military Community & Family Policy opened the Military Spouse Career Advancement Accounts (better known as MyCAA),  I thought the program was brilliant.

I wasn’t the only one.  In the past year, 133,000 spouses of active duty and activated National Guardsmen have applied for the program.  Over 98,000 military spouses have enrolled in class and/or received financial assistance to pursue licenses, certificates, credentials or degree programs that are intended to lead to a portable career.

What made My CAA so cool?  Unlike programs in the past, this one wasn’t some rigid thing in which only a four-year undergraduate degree was considered a worthy goal for the  lil’ military wife unit.  To get the $6000 in financial aid, you didn’t have to write an award-winning essay.  You didn’t have to be needier or younger or missing more than half of your frontal lobe in order to beat out the next guy.

I know because I took advantage of the plan to take my Master’s Degree.  I immediately discovered that the My CAA administrators weren’t just giving money away.  I had to first prove I was qualified to take advantage of the program.  Then I had to write a career plan than involved meeting with academic advisors at the university who really helped me define exactly where I was going.  I had to get accepted into the program.  Only then was I approved and tuition alone was paid directly to the university.  I pay for books and parking and computers and childcare myself.

But that almighty tuition—that formerly impossible piece of the puzzle-- was paid.

And I was duly awed.  Because My CAA spoke volumes to me about how the government perceived my contribution as a military spouse.  For once, they weren’t sending an admiral to offer a heartfelt thank you for six deployments and 16 moves and continued access to our incredibly useful, well-trained, qualified military members. 

Instead,  My CAA scored because it sent a message to military spouses that the government finally gets it.  They get it that they can’t move a military dude around every 2.5 years and expect the spouses to instantly start providing half the income for the family.  They get it that states aren’t particularly kind and understanding to mobile military spouses and licensing requirements.

They get it that we spouses have to make ourselves a little more worthy, a little more educated, a little more competitive in order to cope without the benefit of networking that comes with living in one place a long time. 

My CAA  was such a welcome change.

And now it looks like they are blowing it.  Earlier this week, the program website pasted a terse message that said they were halting operations in order to review all procedures, financial assistance documents and the overall program.  Officials quoted on the www.defense.gov website said that “the review of the program was prompted by a need to ensure the program is meeting its intent, which is to provide spouses with additional opportunities for portable careers.”

That troubles me.  That troubles a lot of spouses who just found out about the program and wanted to get their chance.   That troubles and frustrates our family readiness officers and other family providers who knock themselves out trying to get the right programs to the right people.

Our biggest worry is that they will “review” this program in the most limited way.  They will scream about the money.  Do the math.  If 98,000 spouses are enrolled in classes to a maximum payout of $6000 each, the program has committed to $588,000,000 dollars.  That is a lot of money, and the defense budget for military spouse employment in 2010 is only $66 million.

That’s enough money to scuttle anyone back to their old ways of administration—dribble and drab the money to only the neediest, youngest, least able families.

Wrong answer.  Instead, they need to review the true intent of the program.  Let’s not kid ourselves.  The military needs families to move with their service member as he or she progresses through the career and becomes more and more valuable—both inside and outside the military.  That’s the reality.  The military needs spouses to bring in money to support the family in today’s two-income economy.

My CAA is, in fact, a program that is Darwinian in nature.  It isn’t meant to be a sop to enable those families who are falling apart and cannot cope and will never be able to cope.  Instead, this program identifies those military families who are willing to do the real work of wresting an education and a career from a world that doesn’t bend to the reality of military family life. 

That’s the biggest take away from the unprecedented demand for My CAA.  The onle that makes me gleeful.  The one that I’m afraid everyone will miss.  The My CAA program  is the best evidence that a new generation of military spouses has arrived.  We aren’t dependents anymore.  We are reliable partners in the business of military life.  We who want programs like My CAA represent a group that is willing to go to the next level, to struggle to better support their own family.  All you have to do is give them the right tools in the right way at the right time.

My CAA is one of the right tools.  Don’t dumb down this program.  Make it sit up and beg.