In an effort to curb the rising costs of the service’s extremely popular Credentialing Assistance program, Army officials are slashing the benefit in half and limiting soldiers to one credential a year and no more than three credentials in ten years.

Launched in 2020 as a pilot program, Army CA, which the service saw as a way to both upskill its workforce and help soldiers transition to civilian life, offered soldiers up to $4,000 a year to pursue industry-recognized credentials.

Some of the most requested credentials among soldiers include private pilot, skydiving, and commercial driver’s licenses, security and personal trainer certifications, and qualifications in IT or cyber.

Army Secretary Christine Wormuth told lawmakers earlier this year the program had been a “catastrophic success.” The challenge was the service didn’t have guardrails around the program, she added.

Now, the service is reducing the stipend from $4,000 to $2,000 a year. The program more than doubled in cost — it went from $31.2 million in fiscal 2021 to $70.5 million in fiscal 2024, with projections of continued growth.

The cuts to the program were necessary to put the service on a “fiscally sustainable path to provide the best capability, the best service and benefit available to the majority of soldiers in the Army,” said John Stoneburg, Army’s deputy assistant secretary for manpower and reserve affairs.

“We think it’s still a very valuable program for the Army, but it’s a new program, and it was way more successful than we expected. We just had to get it back into a fiscally sustainable path, and putting those guard rails in place where we can kind of tamp down any unforecasted expenses,” Stoneburg told reporters Wednesday.

“What we don’t want to have happen is this program be wildly successful, and then nine months into the year, we’re out of money because we were not good stewards of resources, and we were not disciplined in how we forecasted. And I think that we may have been in danger and that’s really what fiscal sustainability is about.”

Soldiers will also be required to take the associated credentialing exam after completing their coursework or training, otherwise they will have to reimburse the cost. And soldiers using CA for the first time must complete ArmyIgnitED training before requesting funds.

“We do have soldiers that take tuition assistance, and they take credentialing assistance, and they don’t follow through with their obligations when they enroll. So they will enroll in a class, and they don’t finish the class, or they will sign up for a credentialing and then they don’t take the examination. And so what we were seeing is the Army is putting money out for this credential, but the soldier is getting no benefit from it because they’re not actually following through on their part,” said Stoneburg.

Funding for aviation-related credentials will also be capped at $1,000 per year for all Army components.

And finally, starting in 2025, commissioned officers will no longer be eligible to use Army CA — a move that will impact nearly a quarter of the force.

Plus, all CA requests must receive command approval starting in 2025.

“There’s another aspect of this, which is command involvement. And this is not commander involvement. I want to be very clear about that. This is about the organizational leadership making sure that when the soldier is signing an agreement to use tuition assistance or credentialing assistance, that the command has weighed in and said, ‘Yes, this soldier is able to do this,’” said Stoneburg.

Meanwhile, Army officials are boosting the service’s long-standing tuition assistance program, which covers up to $4,000 a year for soldiers to pursue higher education. The annual cap for the program will increase to $4,500 annually, effective immediately.

“Our voluntary education program is very important to the Army. This is about making soldiers more prepared and more ready, because we think that makes our Army stronger, and that is why we want to maintain the fiscal sustainability of our programs,” said Stoneburg.

The decision to cut the credentialing assistance benefit comes as the Army is upping its recruitment goals — the service finally met its recruitment target in fiscal 2024 after years of recruiting shortfalls.

Copyright © 2025 Federal News Network. All rights reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.