2025 MilitarySupportiveColleges.com Select Schools – Pacific Region

The Most Military-Supportive Colleges in the VA Pacific District – Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Washington

With a renewed emphasis on threats in the Pacific theater, states like Alaska, Hawaii, California, and Washington have always been in focus for every service branch. California alone has the greatest number of service members stationed in any single state in the nation.

Yet the Pacific Rim is also a place where amazing innovation and science are happening. Business is booming in Silicon Valley, the Puget Sound, and even in Las Vegas and Phoenix.

Featured Programs:

Sponsored School(s)

Southern New Hampshire University

Featured Program: SNHU has been helping military service members reach their goals for nearly 80 years—from those coming home from WWII, to those still serving around the globe. See all the ways we can help you maximize your benefits, save time, and save money on the path to your next transition.

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UMass Global

Featured Program: Educating members of the military is at the root of who we are. It’s how we got started more than 65 years ago — providing outreach education to Marines stationed at Marine Corps Air Station El Toro — and our dedication to supporting U.S. service members, veterans, and their families has grown ever since. Military Times ranked us 14th nationwide for primarily online institutions and 19th in the western region in 2023.

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These are all factors that are tied closely to some of the most superb educational systems in the country.

From huge multi-campus public universities, to tiny, elite private schools, universities along the west coast produce graduates that power the startups changing the world today.

With a strong work ethic, extensive military training and experience behind you, and some of the most generous educational benefits in the world today, you have a great opportunity to join their ranks.

How We Identified the Most Military-Supportive Universities in the Pacific Region

First, though, you are going to need to pick a school to earn a degree with those great benefits. That’s where this list comes in.

Many schools claim to be military friendly today. But there’s no official definition of what that is. We searched high and low and came up with our own criteria to establish exactly which schools are the most military supportive in the area.

It turns out that there is a pretty straightforward way to figure out which schools are just offering lip service and which ones are genuinely serious about giving their full support and efforts to service members. And that’s by looking at the kind of cold, hard cash they are willing to put up to get you through school completely tuition free.

All schools on our list offer full Yellow Ribbon program funding to all eligible students who apply—period.

That’s important because it represents a real financial equipment to getting vets the education they deserve. Yellow Ribbon is a joint VA/college program where each participating school agree to kick in a set amount of tuition coverage for a set number of students who don’t have their tuition costs completely covered by GI Bill® benefits.

In practice, this mostly applies to anyone going to one of those elite private schools, where the tuition blows the roof off GI Bill® caps. It also picks up any out-of-state costs over and above your coverage. That gives eligible veterans a shot at attending some of the most famous and well-respected private school programs on the West Coast… free of charge.

Although this isn’t a benefit that all vets will need, it’s a great sign for a school that supports it. And it usually means their other support programs for active duty military, vets, and family members are top notch. That means you can expect service like: