My name is Sergeant Chris Pantzke. While serving in Operation Iraqi Freedom, the convoy that I was in was attacked by a car bomb. Though I was not directly hit, being within the blast radius caused traumatic brain injury (TBI) that I would not find out about until returning home. After coming back home in 2006, I was hospitalized and diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

During the year that I spent in the Warrior Transition Unit, my command stressed getting a higher education. I, like many service men and women, naturally gravitated towards online courses, since it can be difficult to integrate into civilian life so quickly. I decided to study photographer at the Art Institute, but I told my enrollment advisor that I was concerned about not being able to keep up. She told me "Don't worry about it. We'll take care of you."

But they didn't take care of me, despite several requests for help. I ended up failing seven of my 18 courses and dropping out of two. I was devastated that after charging my Post 911/GI Bill more than $65,000 and acquiring more than $26,000 in federal student loans, I was forced to withdraw from the Art Institute because they lacked the disability services needed to support veterans like me.

At some schools, more than 60 percent of military students default on their loans. A 2010 VA audit found serious bookkeeping errors at nearly every school it reviewed: An Arizona school didn't give a veteran promised tuition discounts and pocketed $20,000; a New Jersey school collected nearly $5,000 in tuition from a student after he'd been recalled to active duty. Ridiculous.

For-profit colleges enroll only about 9 percent of U.S. undergraduates. But in the first few years since the new G.I. Bill passed in 2008, for-profit schools enrolled 25 percent of veterans -- collecting 37 percent of the benefit payments to colleges. And yet, with all this money being funneled into for-profit institutions, many lack the supportive services to ensure successful integration as students, with adequate guidance and support for veterans.

Our brave service men and women deserve better.

I'm urging VA Secretary Eric Shinseki to take three critical steps to make sure no more veterans have to go through what I did. Schools that want GI Bill funds should need to meet -- at minimum -- these requirements:

A) Require a dedicated veteran counselor/representative for schools with 10% of enrolled veteran students
B) Require schools to maintain a veteran graduation rate equal to or greater than their overall graduation rate
C) Require schools to give this information directly to veteran students before and during enrollment

Please help me protect my brothers and sisters in uniform.