Toting our far-too-expensive schoolbooks as we walk around campus, it’s easy to forget that halfway around the world many of our peers are carrying guns in the deserts of the Middle East.

We don’t have victory gardens, and we aren’t rationing tin. The fact that American troops are still facing armed conflicts on a daily basis doesn’t make as much of an impact on our daily lives as it has in past conflicts, such as World War II or Vietnam.

But it does have a startling effect on them — the troops who are now attempting to rejoin our everyday lives as war veterans.

Men and women who have put their lives on hold for their country are starting to return home. Many are beginning college for the first time, and ASU is making tremendous efforts to aid them in the transition from the battlefield to the classroom.

Recently, military magazine G.I. Jobs named ASU as a top institution for servicemembers and veterans returning from Afghanistan and Iraq. The University is also the only public university in the state to receive this honor.

The magazine based its selection on the quality of the programs and policies for servicemembers, such as financial offerings and individual recruitment results, as well as academic accreditations.

Of ASU’s servicemember offerings, the Veterans Upward Bound program provides targeted academic advising for low-income and first-generation veterans. ASU also has degree-completion and online programs targeted at veterans and hosted an orientation specifically for servicemembers prior to the fall semester.

ASU is recognizing that servicemembers returning to school face a different set of challenges than the average 18-year-old just-out-of-high-school student, and the University should be applauded for its efforts to assist these men and women.

The outreach programs offered to military servicemembers will be helping to set these servicemen and women up for alternative career paths down the road.

Higher education is becoming more and more of a necessity in their future careers, and without aid from institutions like ASU, these opportunities would not be as easy to find.

According to the Vietnam Veterans of America, veterans make up 23 to 30 percent of America’s homeless population. By aiding military students who are returning to their studies after serving, ASU is encouraging education and helping to head off many issues, such as future homelessness, that veterans of past wars have faced.

Servicemembers dedicate so much of their time and effort toward defending our ability to attend ASU peacefully, and the least we can do is give back.

Though we can’t possibly comprehend the extent of their sacrifice, at least our University is doing what little it can to return the favor.