The Unofficial SMART Scholarship Forum

My boss gave us a heads up today that all DoD probationary employees will be RIF’d/laid off. Is this true? I just started Phase 2 in August 2024 so I’m still probationary status. What happens when I get RIF’d, I assume I don’t need to pay back my SMART scholarship…. hopefully?!

Yikes, hopefully not. I thought DoD was supposed to be more insulated from this kind of thing, so hopefully his information is just wrong. I think even supervisors are confused right now, as guidance comes down by the day. Personally, I'm phase 1, supposed to start at my SF this summer after graduation. I'm wondering how a potential RIF might effect me, or if anyone has heard anything about that.

I’m also very worried about this. I wish SMART would give some kind of guidance since I’m sure most phase 2 scholars are probationary. Personally I feel their only options should be to force the facilities to keep us regardless of what happens due to the service agreement or forgive our debt. But I don’t know anything for certain.

I asked about this, if you're Phase 2 and you're RIF'd, SMART will reach out to your SF POC to confirm that you weren't at fault for losing your job and that they're unable to extend your employment for you. Assuming all of that is true, and you didn't take the fork offer, then they recommend to the gov't that all debt be forgiven. Either way, have your performance reviews/SF50s handy to help your case if needed.

I don’t know what will happen, but my biggest concern is the fact that it doesn’t look like this is a normal RIF if it happens. From what I’ve seen, it appears to possibly be government wide firing of probationary employees for false claims of poor performance. I guess you could fight that with performance reviews as evidence, but it definitely seems like a concern to me.

Although federal the government has been unreasonable, I would imagine that if we are all laid off, we would get unemployment and they would forgive our "debt". How could they force us to work while not allowing us to work? But we are living in chaotic times and I suspect they will make it as stressful as possible.

I'm optimistic that SMART scholars still in service obligations may be okay. According to stuff I'm seeing anecdotally, we wouldn't be held for collections if the termination was out of our control.

If you think about it from the perspective of the feds, it's a bad investment policy to let us go. They've already sunk tens of thousands of dollars of investment into tuition, stipend, etc. Our service agreement, paid at a rate slightly lower than market value for labor in our fields, is really the only way they justify that expenditure. Their goal is to get long-term, well-educated, highly vetted employees.

It would be one thing if we'd been trading labor for wages from the beginning. Then, they could just terminate the agreement without a loss. But as of now, an early termination (at least for phase 1 or early phase 2 scholars) would mean giving away tons of money with very little given in return.

Does anyone know of any probationary SMART Phase2 who has been terminated recently?