As a technical glitch delays education benefits for military veterans and affects students and colleges in the area, it provides an opportune time to revisit the role the GI Bill has played in creating the modern United States.
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs earlier this year attempted to adjust how benefits for veterans are calculated. It was a good idea reflecting appropriate stewardship of taxpayer dollars, but it went haywire. The result, NBC News reports, was that 82,000 veterans across the country did not receive checks they were due.
The federal government disputes that number, but Clark College officials have seen the impact up close. They report that numerous students did not receive funding designed to assist with their education. Clark official Mike Gibson told The Columbian: “Even with a couple of weeks late, let alone a month or two late, that really makes it difficult for these students. We didn’t expect being two months late on pay.”
School officials say they are working with students to allow for postponed tuition payments, and the federal government recently decided to delay its new policy until December 2019. For the sake of students in the region and the sake of Clark College, we hope the snafu gets ironed out quickly.
Meanwhile, we take the occasion to examine the GI Bill and the essential role it has played in U.S. history. In short, it was one of the most significant and one of the smartest ideas this nation has ever devised. Signed into law by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1944, the GI Bill helped prepare the United States for millions of veterans who eventually would return from overseas to find a nation much different than the one they had left.
“We didn’t want to just create legislation that would write a monthly check to a veteran who returned from combat. We recognized that they needed a transition into a life, not a payment for service,” Peter Gaytan told CBS News a decade ago, when he was an executive for the American Legion. “What the GI Bill originally did was allow them to go to school, to purchase their home, to become part of the work force when they took the uniform off.”
Supporters of the GI Bill believed that hundreds of thousands of returning veterans would take advantage of the benefits. Instead, by 1956, nearly 8 million veterans had used the bill’s education benefits — 2.2 million to attend college and 5.6 million for training programs.
The result was the most powerful middle class in the history of the world, one that built the United States into a global economic giant. Historian Ed Humes says, “There was a near certainty that after the war — assuming the allies were victorious– that a depression would follow, just as happened after World War I. That the economy would tank.”
The GI Bill helped prevent such a calamity. And it remains important today following various legislative changes, including the Forever GI Bill of 2017.
For the bill to remain effective, oversight in necessary. Studies show that veterans are inordinately targeted by for-profit colleges that provide few educational benefits. In 2012, President Obama signed an executive order to prevent predatory colleges from aggressively recruiting veterans; in 2017, President Trump proposed removing conflict-of-interest rules between VA officials and for-profit colleges.
If properly managed, the GI Bill can continue to provide benefits for the United States. But the first step is to ensure that veterans receive the payments they are promised.
