Dr. Joe Wescott

Dr. Wescott, or simply “Joe” as he likes to be called, is a leader on Veterans, higher education, and many unique policy issue areas. Joe is currently the Legislative Director for the National Association of State Approving Agencies (NASAA), the association for State Approving Agencies (SAAs). SAAs are aptly referred to as the watchdogs of the GI Bill program, as they are responsible for reviewing and approving programs in post-secondary education to receive GI Bill funding. This last summer, Joe demonstrated a significant impact on the Veterans community for his involvement in the unanimous passage of the Forever GI Bill (HR 3218), signed into law on August 16th, 2017 by the President as Public Law 115-48. One of the critical provisions of the legislation includes increased funding for the SAAs to be able to effectively provide oversight over schools certified to receive GI Bill funds. In recent years, predatory programs have become increasingly difficult to weed out. Due to resource constraints, effective program review is difficult to uniformly achieve.