ABSTRACT
The GI Bill of 1944 has been hailed by educators, social scientists, and historians as one of the most important pieces of legislation in the twentieth century. Enacted three weeks after the D-Day invasion of Normandy, and over thirteen months before the end of hostilities in the Pacific Theater, the GI Bill was a multi-dimensional piece of legislation that provided returning veterans with unemployment compensation, low-cost loans to purchase homes or businesses, and educational benefits. The legislation was enacted out of a sense of obligation to the millions of men and women who served in the armed forces; but the chief concern of the Roosevelt Administration, Congress, and the veterans’ organizations that lobbied hard for this legislation was to prevent a return of economic hard times and political instability. The education of returning veterans was only of secondary concern. In fact, few policymakers in Washington predicted that veterans would jump at the chance for free college tuition or on-the-job training programs. But jump they did, flooding colleges and universities in the five or six years after World War II, and, to an even greater extent, flooding non-college programs, like on-the-job training, correspondence schools, and even programs for the completion of high school. It was the education provision of the GI Bill that proved to have the most far-reaching impact on American society.
