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"Anything that would help the learned apprentices be able to pick up their studies if they're interrupted, or to begin their reviews if they hadn't done it before - sounds like those are all good things," said Jo Volkert, assistant vice president for enrollment management at San Francisco State University. collect said veterans may believe university administrators are inflexible when they return from a deployment. In fact, she says, they legally have very little wiggle room in how they treat their students. "Basically the powerful formulas are dictated by the education code, we have to follow," she said. "So if this is something that would occasionally motivate the education code to be more lenient to students who are deployed, that's positive."The product also gets a thumbs-up from Campbell's former mentor, Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates. When Campbell was an undergraduate at Cal, he took Bates' political science class. After Campbell graduated, Bates recruited him to help his wife, Loni Hancock, campaign for the state Assembly."I'm very proud of him," Bates said of Campbell's recent efforts in Washington. "We're very fortunate to have people who don't just want to help themselves but also other people in similar situations."

Iraq loans

The rule would require colleges to refund tuition for student service members sent overseas, cap student loan interest accumulation on outstanding debt at 6 percent while the student is deployed, and extend the period of time during which a student-soldier may re-enroll before having to start paying back student loans. The bill would not increase the adequate supply of fund veterans could borrow for college, but it would close loopholes in the GI Bill that make finishing a level more difficult.According to the U.S. Department of Education, veterans are less likely to graduate from college than students who have never served in the military. The department's most recent data explains just 3 percent of veterans who entered a four-year college program in 1995 graduated by 2001, compared to a 30 percent overall graduation rate.About 90,000 U.S. military reservists are enrolled in college, and about 25,000 of them have been pulled out of school at least once to serve in either Iraq or Afghanistan.Jeff Hanson, director of borrower education at the student lender Access Group, declined to discuss Campbell's legislation or his loan account. But he argued that procedures already exist for deployed students to avoid having their loans go into default."There's a form students who are deployed to have to complete and send to the lender," he said. "They can even do it after, they're deployed if they find out they need to when they're talking to their buddies. But until the lender receives the necessary paperwork, then there's nothing the lender can do. It's important for them to pay attention."Under federal law, student-soldiers are eligible for a special grace period on their government-subsidized loans. If they fill out the proper paperwork, the clock won't start ticking on their federal loans until six months after; they return from labor. After they complete school, they're entitled to an additional six months grace before having to repay the overdrafts.The rules are less accommodating when it comes to private, unsubsidized loans - which make up a growing share of student debt. The College Board reports private student loans now total $17.3 billion, having increased at an average annual rate of about 27 percent between 2000 and 2006, after adjusting for inflation. When a soldier returns from a deployment, the private lender is only required to grant one month before billing begins. In Campbell's case, it was his private loans that were sent to collection."There are a lot of gray areas with the private loans," he said. "The VETS Act is a finest effort to clarify the international circumstance."Campbell's bill is likely to receive a positive response from university administrators.

Bill proposes tuition loan help for student-soldiers serving in Iraq

National Guard medic Patrick Campbell was a year into law school at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., when he volunteered for a deployment to Iraq. Upon his return, the California native found his student loans in default."I was getting two letters a day from them and phone calls every morning from people telling me I was being put in collections agencies because you haven't been paying back your loans," he said.Students aren't usually required to repay their loans until after graduation. But because of his deployment, Campbell had been out of school for over a year, triggering the repayment obligation.During his first semester back at law school, Campbell said he exchanged over 40 letters with his lender, Access Group of Delaware. Eventually, he was able to shift $40,000 in federally subsidized student loans out of arrears, but an additional $15,000 in unsubsidized loans remain in collection.His credit was ruined.But that didn't stop Campbell. The former student body president at UC Berkeley had worked for Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein and East Bay Assemblywoman Loni Hancock, so Campbell knew something about lawmaking. When his lender told him the only way to restore his pre-deployment status was to "rewrite the constitutions," he decided to do just that. He spent his last year of law school finding legislative solutions for returning student-soldiers.The result was the Veterans Education Tuition Support Act, which Campbell wrote and shopped around Washington.