NewsMax.com
| G.I. Bill: 50 Years of Success |
| Mark Shields |
| May 20, 2000 |
| A GREAT AMERICAN SUCCESS STORY TURNS 50 Fifty years ago this commencement season, 328,841 American men graduated from the country's colleges - three times greater than the number of graduates just a decade earlier. During those 10 years, which began with the nation still deep in depression, the United States fought and won World War II and the Congress passed and President Franklin D. Roosevelt had signed the Servicemen's Readjustment Act, which was primarily intended to prevent unemployment among returning veterans. Thanks to Jack Cejnar, a public-relations officer with the American Legion (which had been the most indispensable lobbyist backing the law), it would be forever known as the G.I. Bill of Rights. Before the G.I. Bill, a college education had been not only beyond the dreams of American working-class families but nearly the exclusive experience of the children of professional and/or affluent parents. The G.I. Bill changed all that almost immediately, and it changed America permanently. The numbers tell the story. Prior to World War II, under 5 percent of Americans over the age of 25 had completed four years of college. As a consequence of the optimism and national confidence sparked by the success of the G.I. Bill, eventually one out of four Americans over 25 would be a college graduate. As Michael J. Bennett reminds us in his terrific book on the social miracle the G.I. Bill wrought, "When Dreams Came True," while the American Legion and arch-segregationist Rep. John Rankin, D-Miss., championed the legislation, giants of American education - including Harvard President James B. Conant and University of Chicago President Robert M. Hutchins - were adamant and elitist in their opposition. Conant publicly expressed concern that the arrival of veterans would inevitably lower academic standards. Hutchins wrote of his fear that the vets would turn American colleges into "educational hobo jungles." Later, Conant would admit his error and call veterans on his campus "the most mature and most promising students Harvard has ever had." Some 7.8 million veterans, close to half of those eligible, enrolled in a school or job-training program. Also available under the law to GI's were loan guarantees to buy a home. That impact was profound: Before the war, two-thirds of Americans rented their homes; after the G.I. Bill, two out of three would own their homes. Opponents of the G.I. Bill who had condemned it as a "handout" that would erode character were silenced by the social and professional mobility this law made possible. The entire postwar cost of $14.5 billion, neutral studies have estimated, has been returned at least seven times over to the U.S. Treasury in the form of increased tax revenues. The G.I. Bill produced 450,000 engineers, 240,000 accountants, 230,000 teachers, 97,000 scientists, 67,000 doctors, 122,000 dentists and - by the early 1960s - one half of the membership of the U.S. Congress. By 1964, three out of four Americans, not surprisingly, trusted the federal government "to do what is right" all or most of the time. Over the last quarter century, that trust number has dropped to just one out of four. Successful presidential candidates of both parties run against the government they seek to lead and against Washington, where they strive to live. That the air we breathe and the water we drink are safer and cleaner now is a direct result of the actions of our federal government we do not celebrate. We instead deny. That our elderly citizens are healthier and dramatically less poor because of the actions of our federal government we do not celebrate. We instead deny. To recognize and to celebrate true national success inspires our collective optimism and our confidence in our ability to act again for the common good. That is the value and the legacy of the G.I. Bill.
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