Case For Education Compelling
Could it be that 50 years after the G.I. Bill we’re finally going to learn from its success?
President Clinton’s proposal for routinely extending education beyond high school builds on the lessons of the G.I. Bill.
That, kids, was the legislation that, among other rewards, gave returning World War II veterans a crack at college,
The results were awesome: Some 7.8 million veterans enrolled, about half of all the eligible. In 1940, 6.6 percent of young adults attended college. In 1947, 10.2 percent did.
The cost was big - $5.5 billion - but the program returned an estimated $6 to the Treasury from enhanced lifetime earnings for every dollar spent on it.
The G.I. Bill turned out 450,000 engineers, 240,000 accountants, 238,000 teachers, 91,000 scientists, 67,000 doctors and 122,000 dentists. (OK, and 17,000 writers and editors, but every program is bound to have its down side.)
By 1960, about half the members of Congress had been educated under the G.I. Bill. But rather than taking the logical step of expanding the program, the nation returned to cash-and-carry college, only shoring up the system at the edges with student loans and Pell grants for the able poor.
Clinton’s ambitious education program begins with pre-school by broadening Head Start and would firm up public education with national performance standards. Its strongest innovations, however, would make post-high-school education far more accessible.
The president proposes tax-free educational savings accounts for families making less than $100,000, two-year $1,500 tax credits (in effect, scholarships) for B-average students and tax deductions of up to $10,000 for the first two years of college or job training.
Success, if that comes, would make a compelling case for going the next two-year step.
There are, of course, important questions to be asked.
The president must show he can pay the $51 billion tab while still balancing the budget on schedule and without wrecking other programs of arguably equal or greater value.
He must show, too, that the program will spread higher education to many who otherwise would forgo it, or that it at least will greatly ease the student-loan debt burden that is undermining so many young marrieds and even delaying family formation.
In principle, however, the president makes a compelling case for raising our educational sights even as, poor-mouthing, we lower our publicpolicy sights in most matters.
In an era of global competition with societies more insistent on effective education than we are, Americans can’t expect to continue prospering with a work force that is losing educational ground.
The United States has twice made huge leaps in higher education. The first was with the Morrill Act of 1862, which gave federal land to the states to establish public colleges. The other was with the G.I. Bill.
If Clinton and this Congress begin the process of making higher education universally available to capable students, they will, to the nation’s great benefit and their own enduring credit, launch the third leap.