At the time, the deal seemed irresistible to Eric Hickam: Give six years to the Army, a recruiter told him in 2003, and you can get a $50,000 “kicker” — the Army College Fund.

But when his payments started coming last fall, his first year at Columbia University, the amount fell far short of what Hickam had anticipated. He thought the college fund was a bonus on top of his GI Bill, worth about $35,000 at the time. The Army says the $50,000 figure was a total of all benefits. Last month, it denied Hickam’s appeal seeking $50,000 more than what he’s receiving for his GI Bill.

“I essentially did six years based on a lie,” says Hickam, 26, who served four tours in Iraq.

Hickam is one in a new wave of veterans who are discovering that their Army College Fund is worth far less than they thought when they enlisted. The Army has acknowledged, in at least 91 cases, that enlistment agreements involving the fund were “blatantly misleading” for more than a decade, a review of publicly available military records show.

Even so, it denied appeals from veterans who felt misled. With help from Congress, which in 2009 created a one-year opportunity for veterans to seek relief, the Army paid out $2.18 million to 86 applicants, or about $25,000 each. But the Army has since denied additional appeals. And no one knows how many of nearly 140,000 young men and women who signed up for the Army College Fund between April 1, 1993, and Sept. 30, 2004, either have given up or have yet to discover the discrepancy.Click here to read more