By Father William J. Byron S.J.
The post-World War II GI Bill is arguably the best and biggest idea ever to find its way into law in the American experience. That legislation bore the name of the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944.
Its educational provision – notably the benefit of two months of free higher education in any private or public college for every one month of military service – together with the legislation’s subsidized home mortgage provision can be said to have created the American middle class.
Peter Drucker wrote that “the GI Bill of Rights – and the enthusiastic response to it on the part of America’s veterans – signaled the shift to the knowledge society.” And he added, “Future historians may consider it the most important event of the 20th century.”
Now that the middle class is shrinking and the home ownership rate is the lowest (62.9 percent) that we have seen in the past 50 years, and now that soaring college costs are burdening students with unmanageable debt and discouraging some from going on to college, it is time to think clearly and creatively on a large scale once again and to bring higher education and home ownership within reach of more Americans.
Our two major political parties have published their platforms and held their nominating conventions, but there is little evidence that either one is thinking big enough to produce a legislative agenda capable of matching the impact of the GI Bill. This bill did not represent a “leave-it-to-government” approach to problem-solving, but it was an example of government getting out of the way and enabling students to learn, universities to teach, homebuilders to build and all citizens to enjoy a better life.
We now have what can be called a knowledge society. We would be stronger and better if we built it to become a service society – service in the form of eldercare, child care, quality education for the poor, repair of the urban infrastructure, protection of the environment, health care finance reform and universal access to health care.
For this to happen, it would be wise for the government to facilitate and support national service, especially civilian national service, and to incentivize the young to move in that direction by providing GI Bill-type benefits, especially educational benefits, in return for specified lengths of national service. Policy wonks, especially those who hope to have a place in the White House in the next administration, would do well to begin reading now about this nation’s experience with the GI Bill.
For starters, I would recommend: Suzanne Mettler, “Soldiers to Citizens: The GI Bill and the Making of the Greatest Generation”; Glenn C. Altschuler and Stuart M. Blumin, “The GI Bill: A New Deal for Veterans”; and Michael J. Bennett, “When Dreams Came True: The GI Bill and the Making of Modern America.”
As a nation, we tend to forget to read the minutes of the last meeting and are thus condemned to repeating past errors and losing the wisdom gained through past experience. We must not permit this to happen in 2017.
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Jesuit Father William J. Byron is a university professor of business and society at St. Joseph’s University, Philadelphia..