Chapter 33 is the Post-9/11 GI Bill. It can pay tuition and fees, a Monthly Housing Allowance while you study, and money for books, and it normally provides up to 36 months of entitlement. How much you get depends first on your qualifying active-duty time after September 10, 2001: 36 months of service (or a Purple Heart, or a service-connected disability discharge) is the 100 percent level, and shorter service pays a set percentage of the full rates. The rates below are the 100 percent amounts for the 2026-27 award year. The housing allowance is not automatic, and active-duty, half-time and online-only students are treated differently. Some Veterans eligible for both GI Bill programs can now reach up to 48 combined months under the Rudisill and Perkins decisions. If you use Chapter 33, you also verify enrollment every month to keep the housing payment. Nothing here is individual benefit advice.
What is Chapter 33 VA education benefits?
“Chapter 33” is how VA and schools refer to the Post-9/11 GI Bill, named for the part of Title 38 of the U.S. Code that created it. It is one of several VA and Defense Department education programs, and it is easy to confuse with the others: Chapter 30 is the Montgomery GI Bill Active Duty, Chapter 1606 is the Montgomery GI Bill Selected Reserve, Chapter 35 is Survivors’ and Dependents’ Educational Assistance for eligible family members, and Chapter 31 is Veteran Readiness and Employment. This guide is only about Chapter 33.
Chapter 33 can pay four different things: tuition and fees (sent directly to your school), a Monthly Housing Allowance paid to you while you study, money for books and supplies, and support for training that is not a traditional degree. It normally provides up to 36 months of entitlement. You have to apply for it — VA does not enroll you automatically.
Who qualifies for the Post-9/11 GI Bill?
VA’s current rule: you may be eligible for Chapter 33 if any of these is true. You served at least 90 days on active duty after September 10, 2001, whether that time was continuous or added up over several shorter periods. Or you served at least 30 continuous days after September 10, 2001 and were discharged because of a service-connected disability. Or you received a Purple Heart after September 10, 2001.
There is a catch for newer service. If you have only one period of service that begins on or after August 1, 2011, and you also qualify for another VA education benefit such as the Montgomery GI Bill, you generally have to pick one and cannot switch later. VA advisers can help you compare before you choose; if you choose the Post-9/11 GI Bill after paying into the Montgomery GI Bill, VA refunds part or all of what you contributed, up to $1,200.
What percentage of Chapter 33 benefits do you get?
Your “eligibility tier” is the percentage of the full Post-9/11 rates VA will pay, and it is based on how much qualifying active-duty time you have after September 10, 2001 — with or without breaks.
| Qualifying active-duty service | Percentage of the full benefit |
|---|---|
| At least 1,095 days (36 months), or a Purple Heart, or a 30-day service ending in a service-connected disability discharge | 100% |
| 910 to 1,094 days (30 to 35 months) | 90% |
| 730 to 909 days (24 to 29 months) | 80% |
| 545 to 729 days (18 to 23 months) | 70% |
| 180 to 544 days (6 to 17 months) | 60% |
| 90 to 179 days | 50% |
There is no 40 percent tier under the current rule. The eligibility tier is also a separate thing from your “rate of pursuit” — how many credits you are taking compared with what your school calls full time — and from the day-by-day proration VA applies when a term starts or ends mid-month. A Veteran can be at the 80 percent tier and still see a payment that is smaller again because they are only taking half a full load. Those three variables stack.
What does Chapter 33 actually pay for?
| Benefit | What it covers | Main limit or condition |
|---|---|---|
| Tuition and fees | Net tuition and mandatory fees, paid to the school | No cap at a public school (in-state rate); capped at $30,908.34 for private or foreign schools; multiplied by your eligibility percentage |
| Monthly Housing Allowance | Money paid to you while you attend school | Not paid to active-duty, half-time-or-less, correspondence, flight or on-break students; requires a rate of pursuit above 50% |
| Books and supplies | Help with course materials | Up to $1,000 per academic year; not paid for flight or correspondence training |
| Yellow Ribbon | Extra tuition and fees above the Chapter 33 maximum | Requires the 100% level and a school that participates and has open slots |
| Licensing and certification tests | Test fees | Up to $2,000 per qualifying test; charges entitlement |
| Tutorial assistance | Help paying a tutor | Up to $100 a month, up to $1,200 total |
| On-the-job training and apprenticeships | A monthly payment while you train and earn | Payment steps down every 6 months; requires monthly hours reporting |
| Rural relocation | A one-time moving payment | $500, only if you live in a very low-density county and must move far or fly to attend |
How much tuition will Chapter 33 pay in 2026-27?
For the academic year that runs August 1, 2026 through July 31, 2027:
At a public college, university or community college, VA pays the net in-state tuition and mandatory fees, and there is no dollar cap. You may be able to get the in-state rate at a public school even if you have not lived in that state. At a private institution, VA pays net tuition and mandatory fees up to $30,908.34 for the year. A foreign school is capped at the same $30,908.34. So are stand-alone non-college degree programs such as HVAC, truck driving or EMT training.
Every one of those figures is the amount at the 100 percent level. If your eligibility tier is 70 percent, VA pays 70 percent of the net tuition and fees, up to 70 percent of the applicable cap. Yellow Ribbon, described below, is the way some students cover the gap at an expensive private school.
How does the Monthly Housing Allowance work?
The Monthly Housing Allowance, or MHA, is a payment to you — not to your school — for the months you are enrolled. It is often described as “your BAH,” but that is loose shorthand. For students taking in-person classes in the United States, VA calculates a “resident” MHA from the military Basic Allowance for Housing rate for an E-5 with dependents, using the 2026 BAH rates for the school’s location for the August 2026 through July 2027 award year. VA then pays a percentage of that rate based on three things: your eligibility tier, your rate of pursuit, and where you physically attend most classes.
Your rate of pursuit has to be more than 50 percent to get any MHA — exactly half time is not enough. VA’s own example: if you take 9 credits in a standard term and your school treats 12 credits as full time, your rate of pursuit is 80 percent. Not every school defines full time as 12 credits, so check yours.
VA does not pay MHA if you are on active duty, if you are a spouse using transferred benefits while the Veteran is still on active duty, if you are enrolled half time or less, if you are taking only correspondence or flight training, or while you are on a school break. During a partial month at the start or end of a term, VA prorates the MHA by the number of days you are actually enrolled.
How much is the online-only housing allowance?
If all of your courses are online, VA bases your MHA on half of the national average housing allowance. For beneficiaries who first used Post-9/11 GI Bill benefits on or after January 1, 2018, the maximum is $1,261 a month for 2026-27. That is a ceiling, not a flat payment: VA still prorates it by your eligibility tier and rate of pursuit.
One practical point from VA: if you take at least one class in person while your other classes are online, you may qualify for the higher resident MHA based on where that class meets. A foreign school has its own MHA maximum — $2,522 a month for the same group of beneficiaries — based on the full national average rather than half of it.
How much does Chapter 33 pay for books and supplies?
VA pays up to $1,000 per academic year toward books and supplies, and you can get up to $1,000 for each qualifying program if you are enrolled in more than one in the same year. At a college or university, the payment works out to up to $41.67 per credit hour, for up to 24 credits per year, prorated by your eligibility percentage and paid at the start of each term. In a non-college-degree program, an apprenticeship or on-the-job training, it is up to $83 per month. There is no book stipend for flight training or correspondence courses.
What is the Yellow Ribbon Program?
Yellow Ribbon helps pay tuition and fees that Chapter 33 does not cover — typically at a private school above the $30,908.34 cap, at a foreign school, or at a public school where you are charged the out-of-state rate. Under the program, the school contributes an agreed amount toward that gap and VA matches it.
Yellow Ribbon is not automatic, even at the 100 percent level. You must be eligible for the Post-9/11 GI Bill at the 100 percent benefit level, and one of these must apply: a Veteran at that level from 36 months of active duty, a Purple Heart, or a disability discharge; an active-duty member with 36 months of service; a spouse or child using their transferred benefits; or a Fry Scholar. Your school also has to take part, has to have an unfilled slot in its agreement with VA (enrollment is first-come, first-served), and has to certify your enrollment. The dollar amount is set by the school and varies widely. Take your Certificate of Eligibility to the school’s certifying official and ask to apply.
How many months of Chapter 33 benefits do you get?
Chapter 33 normally provides up to 36 months of entitlement. Full-time enrollment uses one month of entitlement for one month of school; part-time enrollment uses it more slowly. Tuition, MHA and the book stipend all draw from the same 36 months.
Thirty-six months of entitlement is not the same as the 100 percent benefit level. You can be a 100 percent-tier Veteran with only a few months of entitlement left, or a 60 percent-tier Veteran with a full 36 months. And under the Rudisill and Perkins court decisions, some Veterans can now reach more than 36 months — the next section explains how.
How Rudisill and Perkins can increase total GI Bill entitlement
Federal law caps combined Post-9/11 GI Bill and Montgomery GI Bill entitlement at 48 months, and you cannot use both programs at the same time. For years, many Veterans who served one enlistment and switched from the Montgomery GI Bill to the Post-9/11 GI Bill were held to 36 months total. The Supreme Court’s April 16, 2024 decision in Rudisill v. McDonough, and a later Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims decision in Perkins, changed how VA allocates qualifying service among the programs.
Current VA guidance, in outline: if you completed one qualifying period of active duty and served 56 months or more, and you are eligible for both the Post-9/11 GI Bill and the Montgomery GI Bill Active Duty, you may qualify for up to 48 months combined — up to 12 additional months. If that one period was less than 56 months, you generally still use only one benefit and the Post-9/11 maximum stays 36 months (with a Montgomery contribution refund of up to $1,200 if you switched). If you completed two or more qualifying periods of active duty and are eligible for both programs, you may qualify for up to 48 months combined. VA counts any reenlistment as a separate period; an extension of the same enlistment is not.
The important change is what you do about it: nothing. VA now reviews affected files automatically and notifies you if anything changes. You do not have to submit a request, and the October 1, 2030 deadline VA once set no longer applies. Our detailed guide to the Rudisill and Perkins decisions and the 48-month process walks through the entitlement math and what the review covers.
Do Chapter 33 benefits expire?
It depends on when your active duty ended. If your last separation from active service was before January 1, 2013, your Chapter 33 benefits expire 15 years after that separation date, and anything unused is lost. If your last separation was on or after January 1, 2013, your benefits do not expire, under the Forever GI Bill — the Harry W. Colmery Veterans Educational Assistance Act. Transferred benefits used by a spouse or child can follow different timing, described next.
Can you transfer Chapter 33 benefits to a spouse or child?
Yes, but the Defense Department, not VA, decides whether you can. To transfer, you generally must be on active duty or in the Selected Reserve, have completed at least 6 years of service on the date the request is approved, agree to serve 4 more years, and have the family member enrolled in DEERS. A Purple Heart recipient does not have to meet the service-year requirement but still has to request the transfer while on active duty.
You make the initial request through the Defense Department’s milConnect site — a Transfer of Education Benefits, or TEB. You cannot request a TEB from VA, and a Veteran who has already separated generally cannot start a brand-new transfer. You can move up to 36 months of remaining entitlement among eligible dependents.
Once the transfer is approved, the dependent applies to VA to use it. A spouse can use the benefit right away, whether the sponsor is serving or separated, but a spouse gets no Monthly Housing Allowance while the sponsor is on active duty. A child can only begin using a transferred benefit after the sponsor completes at least 10 years of service; the child needs a high-school diploma or equivalent or must be at least 18, and must be younger than 26. A child, unlike a spouse, may qualify for the housing allowance even while the sponsor is on active duty.
Do you have to verify Chapter 33 enrollment every month?
Yes. If you use Post-9/11 GI Bill benefits, VA requires you to verify your enrollment every month to keep receiving the Monthly Housing Allowance and any kicker payments. VA’s online tool asks you to confirm two things for the month: your credit or clock hours, and the start and end dates of your enrollment. It is not an attendance check or a grade check. You can also verify by text, by email, through Ask VA, or by phone.
Missing a verification does not erase your GI Bill. It pauses the housing and kicker payments until you catch up, and VA has a documented process for restarting them. VA also warns that its enrollment-verification texts never ask for personal information — no Social Security number, no bank details. If a message claims to, treat it the way you would any suspicious message. Our detailed guide to monthly verification and stopped housing payments covers the deadlines, the two-missed-months hold and how to fix a wrong enrollment record.
What happens if you drop a class?
If you withdraw from a class or from your school entirely while using Chapter 33, VA may bill you for housing payments you already received, and your school may have to return the tuition, fees and any VA Yellow Ribbon money paid on your behalf. Without an accepted reason, you owe the full amount VA paid from the first day of the term.
VA can reduce or waive the debt for mitigating circumstances — events beyond your control, such as serious illness or death in your immediate family, an injury or illness while enrolled, an unavoidable job change, unexpected military orders, or a course the school cancelled. You report these through your School Certifying Official, and VA decides.
There is also a one-time 6-credit-hour exclusion. The first time you ever withdraw, VA lets you drop up to 6 credits without showing mitigating circumstances, and you keep the benefits you received through the withdrawal date. It is used up the first time you use it — even if you only drop a 3-credit class — and it does not reset each semester. If you drop more than 6 credits, the exclusion covers 6 and you have to show mitigating circumstances for the rest.
How to check whether a school or program is GI Bill approved
Use VA’s GI Bill Comparison Tool. Approval is granted program by program, usually by a State Approving Agency, so a school can have some approved programs and some that are not. The Comparison Tool also shows a benefit estimate, school statistics and any caution flags — a flag means VA or another federal agency such as the Department of Education or Defense Department has applied added regulatory or legal scrutiny to that program.
“GI Bill approved” is not the same as “accredited.” A program can qualify for VA payments without being accredited, and some licenses and graduate programs require an accredited degree. Check accreditation separately through the Department of Education’s database, and check the school’s credit-transfer policy if you might move schools. Our guide to checking a GI Bill program and spotting trade-school fraud explains the approval, accreditation, complaint and warning tools in more detail.
What else can the Post-9/11 GI Bill pay for?
Beyond a standard degree, Chapter 33 for 2026-27 can also help with: flight training (net tuition and fees up to $17,661.89), correspondence courses (up to $15,012.59), on-the-job training and apprenticeships (a monthly payment that steps down from 100 percent of the BAH rate in months 1-6 to 20 percent after two years), licensing and certification tests (up to $2,000 per test, charged against entitlement), prep courses for those tests, national tests such as the SAT or GRE (no dollar cap), work study, co-op programs, and tutorial assistance. Flight and correspondence training do not qualify for the housing allowance or the book stipend.
Chapter 33 vs Chapter 30 vs Chapter 35
Chapter 30, the Montgomery GI Bill Active Duty, pays a flat monthly amount to the student rather than tuition to the school, and generally requires a $1,200 payroll contribution during service. It is not automatically worse than Chapter 33 — the Rudisill and Perkins rules above can make both relevant to the same Veteran. Chapter 35, Survivors’ and Dependents’ Educational Assistance, is a separate program for eligible spouses and children of Veterans who died or are permanently and totally disabled from service; it is not the Post-9/11 GI Bill and has its own rates and rules, which our Chapter 35 DEA guide covers. Chapter 31, Veteran Readiness and Employment, is a services-based program for Veterans with service-connected disabilities and employment barriers, with different eligibility.
What should you check before enrolling?
There is no reliable way to say in advance exactly what your payment will be, because it turns on your eligibility tier, your rate of pursuit, the school’s tuition, type and location, whether your classes are in person or online, whether you are on active duty or using a transferred benefit, and whether the school offers Yellow Ribbon.
Before you enroll: confirm the exact program in the GI Bill Comparison Tool and read its caution flags; check accreditation separately if your field requires it; ask the school’s certifying official whether it participates in Yellow Ribbon and how much it contributes; and check your used and remaining entitlement in your VA Statement of Benefits. VA’s current education benefit rates and our Education and Online Learning guide collect the official tools. WVCOFCSRA cannot calculate an individual’s benefit; a school certifying official or VA can.
Bottom line
Chapter 33 is the Post-9/11 GI Bill. It pays tuition and fees to your school, a Monthly Housing Allowance and a book stipend to you, and support for non-degree training, normally across 36 months of entitlement. Your percentage of the full rates depends on qualifying active-duty time, the housing allowance has real exclusions and is not simply your BAH, Yellow Ribbon is not automatic, transfers are a Defense Department decision made while you serve, and you have to verify enrollment every month to keep the housing payment. Under the Rudisill and Perkins decisions, some Veterans eligible for both GI Bill programs can now reach up to 48 combined months — automatically, with no request and no 2030 deadline. Current rates apply from August 1, 2026 through July 31, 2027 and change every year.
About this update: The CSRA Women Veterans Resource Guide is an independent informational publisher, not the Department of Veterans Affairs or another government agency. This article does not determine eligibility or replace instructions from the responsible official source.
Questions or corrections? Contact us.
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