The GI Bill

Around the time I was driving home for Thanksgiving there was a super-interesting segment on Talk of The Nation regarding the failings of the current (Montgomery) G.I. Bill. The segment was based on a book by Edward Humes entitled Over Here, and the premise is that thing that makes America great today was the resources available to veterans when they returned from WWII. Obviously, if I’m just now talking about this it is because the piece stuck with me. The segment stuck with me because I think this Humes** guy is wrong.

It goes like this. The original G.I. Bill compensated service members returning from war with one year of unemployment pay, their entire college education (private or public), and low interest, zero down payment home loans. The Montgomery (current) G.I. Bill provides active duty service members up to $1100 per month for 36 months ($39,600) to be used within 10 years of the completion of their service. Receiving this money is contingent upon forfeiting $100 from their first 12 paychecks (pay $1200 and get $40,000).

Humes claims that because 1 in 8 Americans served in WWII the benefits these service members received amounted to the “best investment our country has ever made.” Accordingly, he thinks the same benefits should be awarded to the current service members. He also claims that the current GI Bill reaches less than 1% of the US population, so its benefits cannot be felt.

So, this is what I think:

• Today’s military is a voluntary military. The average cost of a college education in 2007 was 6,000. That means that those who CHOOSE to enter the military can have their tuition and a large amount of living expenses covered at a public university. I can’t think of one state that doesn’t have at least one public university that is not worth attending. PLUS, the veterans can take out loans to cover the difference at a private college. PLUS, they are earning a significant salary from what they earned while in the military. I have an MBA friend who was earning $85,000 a year while in Iraq (granted he was a flight officer…the point is that the salaries they earn are not insignificant).
• The success that America had following WWII cannot be contributed to any single factor. Winning the war was probably a much greater investment to this country than providing an education to those that returned. I doubt that providing those current service members a free education when left service would have the same effect. The US is a much different place than what it was in 1945.
• 16 million Americans died in WWII. That amounts to about 10% of the population. Less than .5% of the population is currently in the military. Education wasn’t an arbitrary investment. It was a need to rebuild this country.
• Using an inflation calculator, the $10 billion cost of the WWII GI Bill amounts to over $111 trillion.

An interesting aside to the NPR story is that Jerome Korlberg has recently started a private fund to pay for scholarships for veterans. Korlberg returned from WWII, went to Harvard Business School and Columbia Law School, started KKR, and became a billionaire. The GI Bill obviously had its intended effect on Korlberg, but two free graduate degrees is probably a bit excessive.

Song Recommendation - The Underdog by Spoon

**Apparently this Humes guy won a Pulitzer Prize back in 1989.

I'm sure you all know by now but the new MMJ album is going to be named Evil Urges and will be released on June 10th.