The College of Charleston just partnered with the Warrior Scholar Project to give active-duty and former service members a free, weeklong crash course in college-level business studies—one of the few initiatives on any campus that actually puts veterans first.

The program, which launched on the CofC campus this week, lets veterans stay in dorms, attend business lectures, and work through case studies with professors. Participants can earn up to 75 hours of coursework in a single week, with classes capped at 10 to 15 students. Veterans are also paired with Warrior Scholar alumni who have already made the jump from military service to college life. The College of Charleston is now one of just 21 schools nationwide to host it.

This matters because the same university system that bends over backward for every progressive cause du jour can barely be bothered to help the people who actually defended the country. Since 2011, nearly 3,000 veterans have gone through the Warrior Scholar Project, and more than 80 percent have earned or are on track to earn a college degree. That is a track record most university diversity offices could only dream of—and they spend vastly more money achieving vastly less.

Ahmed Ahmed, a business fellow and Warrior Scholar Project alum, said the program addresses a real problem veterans face after leaving the service. "A lot of folks when they leave the service — I know a lot of us tend to become non-joiners. They lose that sense of identity, and at WSP you're given that identity. You're able to succeed being around like-minded individuals," Ahmed said.

Active-duty Marine Hayden Bowers, a program participant, said the environment stands apart from military culture. "Everybody's here to learn, we're here to try new things. Everybody's kind of focused on education rather than just getting the job done. You've got a bunch of diverse opinions and no one's really wrong. In the military community you can be wrong and it has devastating results; if you're wrong here, you can just learn and feed off each other," Bowers said.

Bowers called the program the best use of his time while working toward his education goals. "I could be doing other time-intensive things that don't really help me with my education goals. If you're going to do something, do this — definitely worth it. Because I could be patrolling around in the jungle right now until 10, or I can be reading and learning new things until 10."

The College of Charleston said it hopes to bring the program back in the future. Meanwhile, the Charleston Post and Courier, the paper of record in the city, couldn't be bothered to cover it at all—instead running a story about a CofC golfer qualifying for the British Open. That tells you everything about institutional priorities: sports coverage for a Dutch golfer gets the ink; a program helping American veterans transition to academic life gets ignored.

One program, 21 campuses, 3,000 veterans helped since 2011. The question is why it took this long—and why it's still the exception rather than the rule.