Last updated 20/06/24: Online ordering is currently unavailable due to technical issues. We apologise for any delays responding to customers while we resolve this. For further updates please visit our website: https://www.cambridge.org/news-and-insights/technical-incident
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2009
In a 1999 speech at the Yale Law School, former Christian Coalition executive director Ralph Reed was asked to explain how school vouchers could be constitutional. The questioner argued that voucher programs that allowed government money to be used at religious schools would violate the constitutional separation of church and state. In reply, Reed argued, in part, that the voucher system was really nothing new. He failed to see the difference, he said, between the program he was advocating and an earlier program under which the federal government had paid for hundreds of thousands of individuals to go to religious schools. That program, he said, was the G.I. Bill.
2. Although other “G.I. Bills” followed the Korean and Vietnam Wars, this paper deals almost entirely with the 1944 legislation. Henceforth, therefore, “G.I. Bill” will refer to the 1944 legislation unless otherwise specified.
3. A popular example is the best-selling book by David, Osborne and Ted, Gaebler, Reinventing Government: How the Entrepreneurial Spirit is Transforming the Public Sector (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1992)Google Scholar, which cites the G.I. Bill as a success story of business-inspired legislation. A more scholarly exploration is Theda, Skocpol, “The G.I. Bill and U.S. Social Policy, Past and Future,” Social Philosophy and Policy 14 (Summer 1997).Google Scholar
4. Nicholas, Lemann, “G.I. Bill Nostalgia,” Washington Post, 29 08 1993, C7.Google Scholar
5. Michael, Bennett, When Dreams Came True: The GI Bill and the Making of Modern America (Washington, D.C.: Brassey's, 1996); “The G.I. Bill: The Law That Changed America,” PBS documentary, 22 October 1997.Google Scholar
6. Sidney Burrell of Boston University called it “what may have been the most important educational and social transformation in American history” and added, “We are often reminded by historians of higher education what a truly remarkable and even revolutionary act the famous G.I. Bill was. The assertion is a commonplace.” Burrell, , “The G.I. Bill and the Great American Transformation, 1945–1967,” Boston University Graduate Journal 15 (Spring 1967): 3Google Scholar, quoted in Olson, Keith W., “The G.I. Bill and Higher Education: Success and Surprise,” American Quarterly 25 (12, 1973): 597.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
7. The most important scholarly works on the G.I. Bill are Olson, Keith W., “The G.I. Bill, the Veterans, and the Colleges (Louisville: University Press of Kentucky, 1974)Google Scholar; Ross, David R. B., Preparing for Ulysses: Politics and Veterans During World War II (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969)Google Scholar; and Mosch, Theodore R., The G.I. Bill: A Breakthrough in Educational and Social Policy in the United States (Hicksville, N.Y.: Exposition, 1975).Google Scholar
8. Joseph, Preville, “Fairfield University: the Emergence of a Modern Catholic University” (Ph.D. diss., Boston College, 1985), 118–19.Google Scholar
9. McNair, Hunt v., 413 U.S. (1973). Justice Clarence Thomas criticizes the term “pervasively sectarian” for its “shameful pedigree” of bigotry in Mitchell v. Helms, 000 U.S. 98–1648 (2000).Google Scholar
10. The decision in Everson can be confusing because the justices affirmed their belief in a “wall of separation” while upholding reimbursement of parental expenditures on bus fares to parochial schools. They explained their decision on the grounds that government-funded transportation was justified in the interest of public safety. A brief explanation of the complexities of the case can be found in Flowers, Ronald B., That Godless Court?: Supreme Court Decisions on Church-State Relationships (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 1994), 64–65.Google Scholar
11. Olson, , “The G.I. Bill and Higher Education,” 600.Google Scholar
12. Ibid., 598.
13. Ibid., 599.
14. David, Camelon, “I Saw The G.I. Bill Written: Part Two, A Surprise Attack,” The American Legion Magazine 47 (10 1949): 54.Google Scholar
15. Once the bill passed, it gained yet another name: Public Law 346.
16. Other laws covered provisions for disabled veterans. Early controversy over the G.I. Bill centered on the concern that benefits for able-bodied veterans would detract from the assistance given to disabled veterans.
17. All veterans under the age of twenty-five were presumed to have had their education interrupted; older veterans had to demonstrate the interruption of their education.
18. This overview is based on information in Erana, Colonel M. A. and Lt. Col. Arthur Symons, A Veteran's Rights and Benefits: The Complete Veteran's Guide (Harrisburg, Penn.: The Military Service Publishing Company, 1945)Google Scholar and in Mosch, , The G.I. Bill: A Break-through in Educational and Social Policy in the United States. The equivalent of the base stipend for a single veteran in current U.S. dollars would be about $450 per month, after allowing for inflation. No wonder veterans complained that this was too little to live on!Google Scholar
19. Brown, Francis J., Educational Opportunities for Veterans (Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs, 1946), 42.Google Scholar
20. Brown, , Educational Opportunities for Veterans, 73.Google Scholar
21. One compelling incident involved four chaplains—two Protestant, one Jewish, and one Catholic—who went down with a torpedoed ship together after giving their life jackets to enlisted men; their faces appeared on a postage stamp under the words, “Immortal Chaplains … Interfaith in Action.” Albert Isaac, Slomovitz, The Fighting Rabbis: Jewish Military Chaplains and American History (New York: New York University Press, 1999), 84–85.Google Scholar
22. Crosby, Donald F., Battlefield Chaplains: Catholic Priests in World War II (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1994), 61.Google Scholar
23. In 1943, Villanova University President Edward Stanford advanced another rationale for early graduation: young men who spent a year at college before entering the military would increase both the enrollment at Catholic colleges and their own likelihood of returning to college after the war. Edward Stanford, OSA, “Current Developments in Education” (address delivered at a December 1942 meeting of the National Catholic Educational Association), reprinted in Catholic Educational Review 41 (February 1943): 66.Google Scholar
24. “Educational Notes: Catholic Schools and the War,” Catholic Educational Review 42 (February 1944): 105.Google Scholar
25. Philip, Gleason, Contending With Modernity: Catholic Higher Education in the Twentieth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 216–17.Google Scholar
26. Gleason, , Contending With Modernity, 213Google Scholar. Catholic schools had also hosted military training programs during WWI as part of the military's short-lived Students' Army Training Corp (SATC) program. Ibid., 74–75.
27. The eleven Catholic colleges that hosted Navy programs are profiled, along with all the other schools in V–12, in Schneider's, James G. comprehensive work, The Navy V–12 Program: Leadership for a Lifetime (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987).Google Scholar
28. The only exceptions to this rule were colleges run by pacifist religious denominations. In Indiana, for example, Manchester College (Church of the Brethren), Goshen College (Mennonite), and Earlham College (Quaker) refused to participate in military training programs. Cardozier, V. R., Colleges and Universities in World War II (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1993), 114.Google Scholar
29. Cardozier, , Colleges and Universities in World War II, 100.Google Scholar
30. Schneider, , The Navy V–12 Program, 45.Google Scholar
31. Clarence Prouty, Shedd, “Agencies of Religion in Higher Education,” Religious Education 38 (09/10 1943): 288.Google Scholar
32. Leo, Brother I., FSC, “Naval Trainees in the Catholic College,” Catholic Educational Review 42 (02 1944): 94.Google Scholar
33. Some wrote of their discomfort at living in a religious environment that was strange to them and complained about the prayers in class. Others considered the experience broadening and praised the members of the religious order that ran the school. Ibid., throughout.
34. Robert Gannon, president of Fordham University, sat on the ASTP advisory board, and then worked with state officials on the administration of the education title in New York. Edward Stanford of Villanova participated in the Navy's council on V–12 and then was promoted, with the rest of the council, to the Veterans' Administration's Education Advisory Committee on the G.I. Bill. Keefer, Louis E., Scholars in Foxholes: The Story of the Army Specialized Training Program in World War II (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1988), 44Google Scholar; Gleason, , Contending With Modernity, 215.Google Scholar
35. Gleason, , Contending With Modernity, 215.Google Scholar
36. U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Education and Labor, The Servicemen's Education and Training Act of 1944: Hearings Before the Committee on Education and Labor, 78th Cong., 1st sess., 13 December 1943, 23.
37. All statistics taken from Olson, , “The G.I. Bill and Higher Education,” 596–602.Google Scholar
38. Brown, , Educational Opportunities for Veterans, 6Google Scholar. This pessimism may have resulted from miscalculations of how many able-bodied servicemen had been fully discharged and of how long they might take to enroll after leaving the military.
39. Miller, J. Hillis and Allen, John S., Veterans Challenge the Colleges: The New York Program (New York: King's Cross, 1947), 1.Google Scholar
40. The article goes on to list: “Catholic University has 125; Boston College and University of Detroit each have 300; St. John's University, Brooklyn, has 494; Fordham, 525; and Marquette University, 1,100.” “Veterans Education,” America, 12 January 1946, 395.Google Scholar
41. Fitzgerald, Paul A., SJ, The Governance of Jesuit Colleges in the United States, 1920–1970 (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), 79.Google Scholar
42. Olson, , The G.I. Bill, the Veterans, and the Colleges, 43.Google Scholar
43. Preville, , “Fairfield University,” 78.Google Scholar
44. Miller, and Allen, , Veterans Challenge the Colleges, 11.Google Scholar
45. Ibid., 44.
46. These included Vassar, Sarah, Lawrence, Russell, Sage, and Finch, College. Olson, , The G.I. Bill, the Veterans, and the Colleges, 35.Google Scholar
47. Robert, Gannon, SJ, Up to the Present, the Story of Fordham (New York: Doubleday, 1967), 245.Google Scholar
48. Miller, and Allen, , Veterans Challenge the Colleges, 92.Google Scholar
49. Gannon, , Up to the Present, the Story of Fordham, 249.Google Scholar
50. Some Catholic educators conjectured that the government might “repay” those colleges that had participated in military programs by putting them on an approved list for veterans. An example of such a sentiment can be seen in the minutes of the Meeting of the Executive Committee of the College and University Department of the National Catholic Educational Association, reprinted in the National Catholic Educational Institution Bulletin 40 (August 1943): 116Google Scholar. Though such a limited “approved list” of colleges was never considered in any of the official plans for veterans' benefits, the federal government would certainly have faced a public-relations nightmare if it had tried to exclude schools that had participated in ASTP or V–12 from postwar plans for veterans.
51. In the House hearings, for example, a congressman asked, “My point is this: if an ex-serviceman wants to go into the priesthood or the ministry he can do it?” He received an affirmative answer to his question. The G.I. Bill imposed no barriers on the veteran's right to use his educational benefits to get theological or clerical training. Congress, House, Committee on World War Veterans' Legislation, Hearings on H.R. 3917 and S.1767, 78th Cong., 2nd sess., 27 March 1944, 277.
52. Congress, Senate, Committee on Education and Labor, The Servicemen's Education and Training Act of 1944: Hearings Before the Committee on Education and Labor, 78th Cong., 1st sess., 14 December 1943, 84Google Scholar. Thomas used similar phrasing with George Zook, Chairman of the American Council on Education, when he asked, “Do you include in your membership both public and nonpublic, church, and everything which represents the American scheme of education?” Ibid., 15 December 1943, 112.
53. I refer to the Thomas Bill (S. 1509). A comparison of benefits under the Thomas Bill and G.I. Bill (S. 1767) can be found in Mosch, , The G.I. Bill: A Breakthrough in Educational and Social Policy in the United States, 39.Google Scholar
54. Ross, , Preparing for Ulysses, 94–97.Google Scholar
55. These kinds of exchanges can be found throughout both the House and Senate hearings.
56. Skocpol, , “The G.I. Bill and U.S. Social Policy, Past and Future,” 97.Google Scholar
57. Brown, , Educational Opportunities for Veterans, 5.Google Scholar
58. Congress, House, Committee on World War Veterans' Legislation, Hearings on H.R. 3917 and S.1767, 78th Cong., 2nd sess., 29 March 1944, 373. Rankin's distrust of the educational elite resulted in the very odd situation of a long-time states-rightist from Mississippi arguing for federal control instead of supervision at the state level.
59. Bennett, , When Dreams Came True, 167.Google Scholar
60. Miller, William T., “Education for Ex-GI's,” America, 19 08 1944, 493.Google Scholar
61. U.S. Congress, House, Investigation of Gl Schools: Hearings Before the House Select Committee to Investigate Education, Training, and Loan Guaranty Programs Under the GI Bill. 81st Cong., 2nd sess., 1950; U.S. Congress, House, Investigation of Veterans' Education Program: Hearings Before the House Select Committee to Investigate Education, Training, and Loan Guaranty Programs Under the GI Bill. 82nd Cong., 1st sess., 1951; U.S. Congress. House, Select Committee to Investigate Education, Training, and Loan Guaranty Programs Under the GI Bill. Summary Report. 82nd Cong., 2nd sess., 1951.
62. Olson, , The G.I. Bill, the Veterans, and the Colleges, 45.Google Scholar
63. Mosch, , The G.I. Bill: A Breakthrough in Educational and Social Policy, 52.Google Scholar
64. Brown, , Educational Opportunities for Veterans, 17.Google Scholar
65. McManus, William E., “Proposed Changes in the G.I. Bill of Rights,” Catholic Educational Review 43 (11 1945): 516.Google Scholar
66. “Educational Notes,” Catholic Educational Review 42 (May 1944): 304.Google Scholar
67. National Catholic Educational Association, Meeting of the Executive Committee of the College and University Department, reprinted in the National Catholic Educational Association Bulletin 40 (August 1943): 115.
68. Ibid., 115.
69. House Committee on World War Veterans' Legislation, “Correspondence.” File 78 A–F39.1–6, RG 233. National Archives.
70. Johnson, George, “Catholic College Heads Warned of Purpose of Fund Sought by N.E.A.,” Catholic Educational Review 42 (03 1944): 183.Google Scholar
71. Pitt, Felix, “Federal Aid for Catholic Schools?” Catholic Educational Review 43 (02 1945): 67.Google Scholar
72. William, McManus, “Federal Aid for all Schoolchildren,” Catholic Educational Review 43 (04 1945): 198.Google Scholar
73. Cornelius, Maloney, “An Evaluation of Present Opposition to Parochial Schools,” Catholic Educational Review 44 (03 1946): 165.Google Scholar
74. “Educational Notes,” Catholic Educational Review 44 (June 1946): 369.Google Scholar
75. “Federal Aid,” America, 24 November 1945, 212.Google Scholar
76. William, McManus, “As Congress Went Home,” Catholic Educational Review 44 (09 1946): 400.Google Scholar
77. Ibid., 401.
78. Nuesse, C. Joseph, The Catholic University of America: A Centennial History (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1990)Google Scholar. There are, of course, accounts that do describe the military training programs and the postwar crunch of veterans. An example is Gerald, McKevitt, SJ, The University of Santa Clara: a History, 1851–1977 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1979)Google Scholar. Most of these, and McKevitt is no exception, only describe the immediate effects of crowding under military training programs and the G.I. Bill, rather than examining whether either development had any long-term significance.
79. Fitzgerald, , The Governance of Jesuit CollegesGoogle Scholar. Another source that assigns importance to the postwar influx of students while ignoring the G.I. Bill is Andrew, Greeley, From Backwater to Mainstream: a Profile of Catholic Higher Education, The Carnegie Commission on Higher Education, no. 1. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969), 15.Google Scholar
80. Dolan, Jay P., The American Catholic Experience: A History from Colonial Times to the Present (New York: Doubleday, 1985), 399.Google Scholar
81. Gleason, , Contending with Modernity, 168.Google Scholar
82. Ibid., 209.
83. See notes 71–75 for quotations and citations for a few of these editorials.
84. Gleason, , Contending With Modernity, 215Google Scholar. Federal aid to Catholic schools can also be thought of as a continuum starting with research contracts during the war, increasing with the G.I. Bill and federal-surplus programs, and into the present federal financial aid programs. For an example of this, see Leahy, William F., Adapting to America: Catholics, Jesuits, and Higher Education in the Twentieth Century (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1991), 126Google Scholar. Like Gleason, Leahy argues that the G.I. Bill was a milestone in Catholic education but approaches the argument from the individual rather than the institutional perspective; he writes that, helped by the growth of labor unions, higher wages, and an expanding economy, the G.I. Bill allowed Catholics to attend college in large numbers for the first time. Ibid., 124.
85. Greeley, , From Backwater to Mainstream, 144.Google Scholar
86. Paul, Blanshard, American Freedom and Catholic Power (Boston: Beacon, 1949), 104.Google Scholar
87. This analysis of Richardson, Tilton v. is based on Flowers, That Godless Court?, 64–65.Google Scholar
88. Whitehead, K. D., Catholic Colleges and Federal Funding (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1988), 71.Google Scholar
89. Earlier in the same pamphlet, Whitehead declared that “This type of federal student financial assistance goes back to World War II's G.I. Bill of Rights.” Ibid., 29.
90. While the actual payment under the 1944 bill was to the school, the veteran chose which institution would receive “his” money from the government. The Korea Bill, by contrast, paid the veteran directly.
91. Whitehead, , Catholic Colleges and Federal Funding, 30.Google Scholar
92. An example of this kind of argument can be found in Lamar, Alexander, “Vouchers for Any Elementary School?” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 31 08 1992, 3B.Google Scholar
