From the Battlefield to the Classroom, War Vets Go to College

TEMPE, Ariz., Oct. 30, 2008 — -- John Villarreal stands out in stark contrast to his fellow students at Arizona State University, and not just because he's a decade older than most of them.

Villarreal, a 30-year-old Army veteran, has been to war and back. "I just look and think about where I was when I was their age," he said. "I was in Panama training to kill."

The battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan may be far removed from U.S. colleges, but Villarreal suggests that the brutality of war and its psychological reminders are bound to define the life of student-veterans and how they interact with idealistic college students -- for better or for worse.

"I don't care what people say, you definitely don't come back the same as you went," the junior said. "You see everything differently."

Villarreal is among 850 students at Arizona State University who are receiving some form of veterans benefits, according to university officials, which means that veterans who're footing the bills themselves are unaccounted for. Nationally, the exact number of veterans attending U.S. colleges is just as hard to come by. But the Department of Veterans Affairs estimates that 250,000 veterans are in school on the GI Bill, which helps them pay to study.

And more generous benefits are expected to attract additional veterans as they return from service in numbers not seen since the Vietnam War.

Villarreal, of East Chicago, Ind., decided nearly 12 years ago to enroll in the Army right after high school to train for war and combat.

"I wasn't sure of what I wanted to do after high school. I wasn't ready to go to school [college]," Villarreal said. "Financially and mentally, I just wasn't ready."

Instead, he enlisted in the Army after high school, in 1996, before eventually joining the National Guard and heading overseas. The experience never leaves his mind, he said, especially the time in Iraq.

He carried a gun every day for a year straight, Villarreal said, and he left the base never knowing for sure whether he would come back alive.