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The G.I. Bill and U.S. Social Policy, Past and Future*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 January 2009

Theda Skocpol
Theda Skocpol
Affiliation:
Government and Sociology, Harvard University
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Extract

The fiftieth anniversary of the death of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt arrived only months after the 1994 U.S. elections brought to power conservative Republican congressional majorities determined to reverse key legacies of Roosevelt's New Deal. At this juncture of special poignancy for many of those assembled at the “Little White House” in Warm Springs, Georgia on April 12, 1995, President Bill Clinton offered remarks on “Remembering Franklin D. Roosevelt.” “Like our greatest presidents,” Clinton eulogized, Roosevelt “showed us how to be a nation in time of great stress” and “taught us again and again that our government could be an instrument of democratic destiny.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Philosophy and Policy , Volume 14 , Issue 2 , Summer 1997 , pp. 95 - 115
Copyright
Copyright © Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation 1997

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References

1 All quotes from this speech are from Office of the Press Secretary, The White House, “Remarks by the President at ‘Remembering Franklin D. Roosevelt,’ 50th Anniversary Commemorative Services,” The Little White House, Warm Springs, Georgia, 04 12, 1995, 5 pp. typescript.Google Scholar

2 For an overview of the 1944 G.I. Bill and basic facts about it, see Bennett, Michael J., “The Law That Worked,”Google Scholar and Olson, Keith W., “The Astonishing Story: Veterans Make Good on the Nation's Promise,” both in Educational Record, vol. 75, no. 4 (Fall 1994).Google Scholar

3 See Levitan, Sar A. and Cleary, Karen A., Old Wars Remain Unfinished: The Veteran Benefits System (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973)Google Scholar; and Educational Testing Service, Final Report on Educational Assistance to Veterans: A Comparative Study of Three G.I. Bills, submitted to the Committee on Veterans' Affairs, United States Senate, 09 20, 1973 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1973).Google Scholar

4 Bennett, , “The Law That Worked”Google Scholar; and Moley, Raymond Jr., The American Legion Story (New York: Duell, Sloane, and Pearce, 1966), p. 281.Google Scholar

5 Olson, Keith W., “The G.I. Bill and Higher Education: Success and Surprise,” American Quarterly, vol. 25, no. 5 (12 1973), p. 601.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Olson, , “The G.I, Bill and Higher Education.”Google Scholar

7 The 20 percent estimate comes from the leading historian of the G.I. Bill. See Olson, Keith W., The G.I. Bill, the Veterans, and the Colleges (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1974), p. 102.Google Scholar

8 Behrman, Jere R., Pollak, Robert A., and Taubman, Paul, “Family Resources, Family Size, and Access to Financing for College Education,” Journal of Political Economy, vol. 97, no. 21 (1989), pp. 398–419.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 Hutchins, Robert, “Threat to American Education,” Collier's, vol. 114 (12 30, 1944), pp. 20–21.Google Scholar

10 Fine, Benjamin, “Educators Praise Their G.I. Students: Colleges throughout the Nation Agree That Standards Have Been Raised by Veterans,” New York Times, 10 11, 1949, p. 35Google Scholar. A key study was Frederiksen, Norman and Schrader, W. B., Adjustment to College: A Study of Ten Thousand Veteran and Nonveteran Students in Sixteen American Colleges (Princeton, NJ: Educational Testing Service, 1951)Google Scholar. For a full discussion and citations to many other studies, see Olson, , The G.I. Bill, the Veterans, and the Colleges.Google Scholar

11 Kerr, Clark, “Expanding Access and Changing Missions: The Federal Role in U.S. Higher Education,” Educational Record, vol. 75, no. 4 (Fall 1994), pp. 27–31.Google Scholar

12 Starr, Paul, The Discarded Army (New York: Charterhouse, 1973), p. 233.Google Scholar

13 O'Neill, David, “Voucher Funding of Training Programs: Evidence from the G.I. Bill,” Journal of Human Resources, vol. 12, no. 4 (Fall 1977), pp. 425–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Angrist, Joshua D., “The Effects of Veterans' Benefits on Education and Earnings,” Industrial and Labor Relations Review, vol. 46, no. 4 07 1993), pp. 637–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 On these contemporary conditions, see Freeman, Richard B., ed., Working under Different Rules (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1994)Google Scholar; and Newman, Katherine S., Declining Fortunes: The Withering of the American Dream (New York: Basic Books, 1993).Google Scholar

15 Veterans' Benefits in the United States: A Report to the President by the President's Commission on Veterans' Pensions (Washington, CXI: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1956), pp. 300–306.Google Scholar

16 Ibid.; and Moley, , The American Legion Story, p. 282.Google Scholar

17 Veterans' Benefits in the United States, ch. 3. For the continuity of this comparison into the 1970s, see Taussig, Michael, Those Who Served: Report of the Twentieth Century Fund Task Force on Policies toward Veterans (New York: Twentieth Century Fund, 1974), pp. 51, 55.Google Scholar

18 Hartmann, Susan M., The Home Front and Beyond: American Women in the 1940s (Boston, MA: Twayne Publishers, 1982), pp. 105–7.Google Scholar

19 Starr, , The Discarded Army, pp. 236–37.Google Scholar

20 Skocpol, Theda, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1992).Google Scholar

21 Further discussion appears in the conclusion to Skocpol, Theda, Social Policy in the United States: Future Possibilities in Historical Perspective (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995).Google Scholar

22 Children's Defense Fund, Wasting America's Future: The Children's Defense Fund Report on the Costs of Child Poverty (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1994)Google Scholar; Gingrich, Newt, To Renew America (New York: Harper Collins, 1995).Google Scholar

23 Peterson, Peter G., Facing Up: How to Rescue the Economy from Crushing Debt and Restore the American Dream (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993)Google Scholar. On the groups pushing privatization, see Kosterlitz, Julie, “Touching the Rail,” National Journal, 12 23, 1995, pp. 3136–40.Google Scholar

24 Skocpol, , Protecting Soldiers and Mothers, ch. 2.Google Scholar

25 Ibid., ch. 9.

26 Skocpol, , Social Policy in the United States, ch. 4.Google Scholar

27 Pencak, William, For God and Country: The American Legion, 1919–1941 (Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press, 1989), p. 82Google Scholar; Jones, Richard Seelye, A History of the American Legion (Indianapolis and New York: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1946), chs. 15 and 27.Google Scholar

28 Dillingham, William Pyrle, Federal Aid to Veterans, 1917–1941 (Gainesville, FL: University of Honda Press, 1952).Google Scholar

29 Skocpol, , Protecting Soldiers and MothersGoogle Scholar, discusses early-twentieth-century U.S. elite reactions against open-ended spending on federal social or veterans' benefits.

30 Dillingham, , Federal Aid to Veterans, chs. 1 and 2Google Scholar; and National Industrial Conference Board, The World War Veterans and the Federal Treasury (New York: National Industrial Conference Board, 1932), chs. 1 and 2.Google Scholar

31 National Industrial Conference Board, The World War Veterans and the Federal Treasury, ch. 3.Google Scholar

32 Dillingham, , Federal Aid to Veterans, ch. 13.Google Scholar

33 Quotes are from “Address of President Roosevelt,” Proceedings of the Fifteenth National Convention of the American Legion, Chicago, Illinois, 10 2–5, 1933 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1934), pp. 15–17.Google Scholar

34 “The President Vetoes the Bonus Bill, May 22, 1935,” in The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, vol. 4 (New York: Random House, 1938), pp. 189, 190, 193.Google Scholar

35 See Roosevelt, 's “Statement on Signing the Bill Reducing the Draft Age,” 11 13, 1942, in The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, vol. 11, compiled by Rosenman, Samuel I. (New York: Russell and Russell, 1950), pp. 470–71.Google Scholar

36 This account draws especially upon Olson, , The G.I. Bill, the Veterans, and the Colleges (supra note 7), ch. 1Google Scholar; and Ross, Davis R. B., Preparing for Ulysses: Politics and Veterans during World War II (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969).Google Scholar

37 Olson, , The G.I. Bill, the Veterans, and the Colleges, ch. 1.Google Scholar

38 For an overview, see Amenta, Edwin and Skocpol, Theda, “Redefining the New Deal: World War II and the Development of Social Provision in the United States,” in The Politics of Social Policy in the United States, ed. Weir, Margaret, Orloff, Ann Shola, and Skocpol, Theda (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), pp. 81–122.Google Scholar

39 Ross, , Preparing for Ulysses, ch. 4.Google Scholar

40 The overall pattern is discussed in Amenta, and Skocpol, , “Redefining the New Deal.”Google Scholar

41 For the Legion's work on the G.I. Bill, see Moley, , The American Legion Story, ch. 16Google Scholar; Jones, , A History of the American Legion, pp. 217–20Google Scholar; and Camelon, David, “I Saw the GI Bill Written,” in 3 parts, American Legion Magazine, vol. 47, nos. 3–5 (09, 10, and 11 1949).Google Scholar

42 Ross, , Preparing for Ulysses, pp. 121–22.Google Scholar

43 Ibid., p. 123.

44 Pencak, , For God and Country.Google Scholar

45 Ibid., ch. 10; Jones, , A History of the American Legion, chs. 15–18.Google Scholar

46 For a good overview, see Pencak, William, “Veterans' Movements,” in Encyclopedia of American Political History: Studies of the Principal Movements and Ideas, ed. Greene, Jack P. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1984), vol. 3, pp. 1332–47.Google Scholar

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48 Democratic Leadership Council, Citizenship and National Service: A Blueprint for Civic Enterprise (Washington, DC: Democratic Leadership Council, 05 1988).Google Scholar

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50 As quoted in Waldman, Steven, The Bill: How the Adventures of Clinton's National Service Bill Reveal What Is Corrupt, Comic, Cynical—and Noble—About Washington (New York: Viking, 1995), p. 4.Google Scholar

51 As quoted in “Nunn-McCurdy Plan Ignites National Service Debate,” Congressional Quarterly, 03 25, 1989, p. 645.Google Scholar

52 Other voices today are also calling for investing the Social Security Trust Fund in something more remunerative than low-yield government debt. See, for example, Bosworth, Barry, “Putting Social Security to Work: How to Restore the Balance between Generations,” Brookings Review, vol. 13, no. 4 (Fall 1995), pp. 36–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar. It would be possible, of course, to combine Bosworth's call for institutionally managed market-investments of Social Security funds with Bluestone's call to devote part of the Trust Fund to investments in income-contingent educational loans. The latter invests in human capital and in future enhanced tax returns, while the former invests in the stock market, both without breaking Social Security into individualist private-investment pools. Together, Bosworth's and Bluestone's ideas are a cogent alternative to current calls, urged on by Wall Street, to “privatize” Social Security, hence destroying it as a source of mildly redistributive social insurance for all of America's elderly.

53 Bluestone, Barry, “Generational Alliance: Social Security as a Bank for Education and Training,” The American Prospect, no. 2 (Summer 1990), p. 29.Google Scholar

54 Waldman, , The Bill (supra note 50).Google Scholar

55 See, for example, Walters, John, “Clinton's AmeriCorps Values: How the President Misunderstands Citizenship,” Policy Review, no. 75 (01–02 1996), pp. 42–46.Google Scholar

56 For the scope and structure of federal student loan programs in the mid-1980s, see Doyle, Denis P. and Hartle, Terry W., “Washington: Student-Aid Muddle,” The Atlantic, vol. 257, no. 2 (02 1986), pp. 30–34.Google Scholar

57 See Moskos, , A Call to Civic Service (supra note 49).Google Scholar