When the Post-911 Veterans Educational Assistance Act--better known as the Post-911 GI Government Issue Bill--was signed into law on June 20, 2008, it represented the largest expansion of veterans education benefits since passage of the original GI Bill in 1944. The new GI Bill took effect on August 1, 2009, thereby increasing the higher education benefits available to individuals who served on active duty in the US armed forces after September 10, 2001. One year later, more than half a million current and former service members had applied for eligibility certification Carter, 2010 and just over 300,000 had used the benefits to enroll in higher education White House, 2010. Because a students Post-911 GI Bill benefits depend on the state and location of the educational institution and are paid to both institutions and students, and because the US Department of Veterans Affairs VA had only a little more than a year to upgrade its claims processing systems, early implementation posed several challenges, especially with regard to delayed and erroneous payments Maze, 2010a McBain, 2009 Philpott, 2009. Given these challenges, many of which had been anticipated Wilson, 2009, the American Council on Education ACE asked the RAND Corporation to study students experiences using the Post-911 GI Bill in its first year of availability. The study set out to understand early Post-911 GI Bill implementation challenges from the perspective of both college students and higher education institutions and to gain insight into how higher education institutions can more effectively support returning veterans. The research was carried out between February and August of 2010 and therefore reflects participants experiences during only the initial year of GI Bill implementation.