Eligibility and Funding for Space-Available Students

The Secretary of Defense has authority, granted by Public Law 95-561, to allow classes or categories of students, other than space-required students, to enroll in DODDS. However, the July 29, 1985, Conference Report instructed DOD not to include the cost of educating tuition-free, space-available students in its budget requests. Tuition-paying students can be either federally connected, such as dependents of State Department or other U.S. government agency sponsors, or nonfederally connected, including dependents of retired military or foreign national sponsors. Ninety-six percent of tuition-free, space-available students are the dependents of DOD military or civilian sponsors who are not authorized government transportation and housing overseas for their dependents. In Korea, however, the situation is different. In fact, however, DOD does take into account the extra costs for educating space-available, tuition-free students in requesting funds, because it estimates its costs on the basis of the total student population of the previous year, including the space-available, tuition-free students. About 6 percent, or 5,478, of these students were enrolled as space-available. The Panama Region, however, has 22.3 percent space-available enrollment primarily due to a higher number of tuition-free dependents of DOD civilians. Circumstances Contributing to High Space-Available Enrollments

Most DODDS schools—about 75 percent—have space-available enrollments of 5 percent or less. DODDS provided the following explanations.
Why GAO Did This Study

Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO provided information on educating Department of Defense (DOD) dependents overseas, focusing on: (1) legislation that establishes eligibility and authorizes funding for students to enroll in DOD Dependents Schools (DODDS) as space becomes available; (2) the number of space-available students enrolled and their locations; and (3) the circumstances surrounding high space-available enrollments in some schools.

What GAO Found

GAO found that: (1) the Secretary of Defense is authorized to establish enrollment eligibility for space-available students and has categorized space-available students as either tuition-paying or tuition-free; (2) tuition-paying students can be either dependents of U.S. government agency sponsors or retired military and foreign national sponsors; (3) tuition-free, space-available students are the dependents of DOD sponsors who are not authorized government transportation and housing overseas for their dependents; (4) DOD is required to only include the cost of educating space-required and tuition-paying students in its budget request, but DODDS has not followed these instructions; (5) although tuition-free, space-available students only represent about 3 percent of the DODDS student population, the percentage is much higher in Korea; (6) in school year 1994-1995, space-available enrollments represented about 6 percent of total DODDS enrollment, almost half of which were tuition-free; and (7) although 75 percent of DODDS schools had space-available enrollments of 5 percent or less, four schools had enrollments of over 65 percent.