A Brief History Of: The GI Bill

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Student and former Army Corporal Matt Hilerio enlisted to take advantage of the GI Bill.

Mary Knox Merrill / The Christian Science Monitor / Getty

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Few government programs have delivered on america's promise as a land of opportunity as explicitly as the GI Bill. When it was signed in June 1944, the Servicemen's Readjustment Act (the policy's official name) offered a college scholarship to all those who had served in uniform, whether or not they had fought on the front lines. In the decades since, benefits have fallen far behind the cost of university tuitions, prompting Senators Jim Webb and Chuck Hagel to draft a new GI Bill that would offer soldiers full tuition at any state school.

As generous as that sounds, the 1944 bill--among the most significant pieces of legislation ever passed by the U.S. Congress--included much more. Its education benefits threw open the doors of élite academies to the masses: in 1947, veterans made up almost half the nation's college students. It also offered low-interest, no-money-down mortgages, backed by the U.S. government, that allowed millions of families to purchase their first homes. The move helped spark the postwar baby boom and the suburbanization of America in the 1950s: it effectively created the American middle class.

By 1956, when the initial program ended, close to half the nation's 16 million veterans had either gone to college or received job training. A generation flourished. The current situation presents far more difficult choices. With the U.S. military stretched thin, President George W. Bush and Senator John McCain--a veteran's veteran if ever there was one--oppose the latest version of the GI Bill over fears that its educational opportunities will reduce the number of soldiers re-enlisting for further tours of duty. But supporters of the new bill point out that duty runs both ways. As Webb puts it, "This is about taking care of the people who have taken care of us."