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16. The early Republic was “not so much a country with a post office, as a post office that gave popular reality to a fledgling nation.” Theda Skocpol, “What Tocqueville Missed,” Slate.com (1996).

17. Student loans are also another major component of federal government aid. The Middle Income Student Assistance Act—which took the caps off student loans, allowing all families to participate in the program and thus significantly expanding its scope—is discussed briefly under the heading “Politics of License and Capacity.”

18. It is always tricky to identify a policy’s goals. Looking broadly to context, Olson argues that the GI Bill was an antidepression measure. In my analysis, I have chosen to look more narrowly at the primary goals as identified and pursued by the policy itself. Olson, Keith W., “The GI Bill and Higher Education: Success and Surprise,” American Quarterly 25, no. 5 (1973).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19. States varied in the tuition assistance they provided to World War I veterans, but the federal government aided only the disabled. Mosch, Theodore R., The GI Bill: A Breakthrough in Educational and Social Policy in the United States (Hicksville, N.Y., 1975, 76)Google Scholar; Fine, Benjamin, “Training for Veterans Wins Wide Approval,” New York Times, 7 November 1943Google Scholar; Ross, Davis R. B., Preparing for Ulysses: Politics and Veterans During World War II (New York, 1969, 29)Google Scholar; “Demobilization and Readjustment,” Conference on the Postwar Readjustment of Civilian and Military Personnel, Washington, D.C., 1943.

20. “Demobilization and Readjustment”; Olson, Keith W., The GI Bill, the Veterans, and the Colleges (Lexington, Ky., 1974, chap. 1)Google Scholar; Mosch, The GI Bill: A Breakthrough in Educational and Social Policy in the United States, chap. 2; Ross, Preparing for Ulysses, chaps. 2, 3.

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22. The Department of Veterans Affairs succeeded the Veterans Administration in March 1989. The Department of Education succeeded the Office of Education in 1980.

23. Olson, The GI Bill, the Veterans, and the Colleges 15–18; The Readjustment Act of 1944, 2d sess. (June 22, 1944), 346.

24. Subcommittee on Education of the Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, Higher Education Act of 1965, 1st sess., 16, 22, 30 March, 18–20 May, 1–3, 7–8, and 11 June 1965. Committee on Education and Labor, Subcommittee on Education, Higher Education Act of 1965, 1st sess., 1–5 February, 8–20 March, 30 April, 1 May 1965.

25. Higher Education Act of 1965.

26. “Scholarships Featured in College Aid Bill,” in Congressional Quarterly Almanac (Washington D.C., 1965).Google Scholar

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28. “Nursery to Graduate Schools Aided in 1965,” in Congressional Quarterly Almanac (Washington, D.C., 1966).Google Scholar

29. The Higher Education Act provided aid to educational institutions to distribute under broad federal guidelines, which included work-study, student loans, and Educational Opportunity Grants (EOG; after 1972, renamed Supplementary Educational Opportunity Grants [SEOG]). The key differences between grant aid in the original Higher Education Act and Pell Grants are: (1) EOG grant aid is given directly to colleges and universities, which then determine a student’s specific eligibility; (2) EOG is not distributed equitably to postsecondary institutions based on need; (3) EOG does not guarantee a minimum amount of aid and has more financially eligible students competing for a limited pool of dollars.

30. “Higher Education Act of 1971,” U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Education and Labor, 1971; Claiborne Pell, “S. 1969—Introduction to a Bill to Amend the Higher Education Act of 1965,” Congressional Record, 25 April 1969.

31. “Education Amendments of 1972,” U.S. Congressional and Administrative News.

32. The summary of events is taken from Gladieux, Lawrence E. and Wolanin, Thomas R., Congress and the Colleges: The National Politics of Higher Education (Lexington, Mass., 1976).Google Scholar

33. Wolanin, Thomas R., in Memory, Reason, Imagination: A Quarter Century of Pell Grants (New York, 1998), 15.Google Scholar

34. “Education Amendments of 1972,” U.S. Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources, 1972; “Higher Education Act of 1971.”

35. “Education Amendments of 1972”; Gladieux and Wolanin, Congress and the Colleges.

36. “Education Amendments of 1972.”

37. “Federal involvement in higher education policy making has always been piecemeal, and the role of the national government is ambiguous.” Constance Cook, Lobbying for Higher Education (Nashville, 1998), 5.

38. See Simon, Herbert A., Administrative Behavior (New York, 1947).Google Scholar

39. See Graham, Hugh Davis, The Uncertain Triumph: Federal Education Policy in the Kennedy and Johnson Years (Chapel Hill, 1984), xviii.Google Scholar

40. Advocates have pressed to have merchant seamen included under the VA and recognized as veterans since their service in World War I. See HR 9485 and S3910 (76th Congress), HR 3318 and S667 (77th Congress), HR 1511 (79th Congress). But both the American Legion and the VA opposed the measures and wanted strict distinctions between “civilians” and “soldiers.” World War II merchant marines were recognized as “veterans” in 1988, when the Secretary of the Air Force declared veterans those men who served in active service between 7 December 1941 and 15 August 1945. See E. S. Land, “War Shipping Administration Views on Certain Benefits to Seamen,” Washington, D.C., 1944; Frank T. Hines, “HR 3318 Seventy-Seventh Congress. Letter to Hon. John E. Rankin,” Veterans’ Administration, 1941.

41. The Congressional Digest explains that “the Legion is not opposing the granting of educational aid to seamen, but feels such aid should be administered separately from veteran’s aid.” “Federal Aid for Education and Training of Service Men and Women,” Congressional Digest 23, no. 3 (1944), 67.

42. For more on the Legion’s role, see Mettler, Suzanne, “The Creation of the GI Bill of Rights of 1944: Melding Social and Participatory Citizenship Ideals,” Journal of Policy History 17, no. 4 (2005).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

43. Returning soldiers received tuition, books, and fees in addition to a living stipend, which was adjusted for family size. In interpreting the GI Bill and administering its provisions, the VA was “consistently generous.” Olson, The GI Bill, the Veterans, and the Colleges, 61.

44. Brown, Michael K., Race, Money, and the American Welfare State (Ithaca, 1999, chap. 3).Google Scholar

45. Olson, The GI Bill, the Veterans, and the Colleges, 60.

46. Interview, 18 October 2005.

47. The Education and Labor Committee in the House and the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee in the Senate.

48. Interview, 5 October 2005.

49. Higher Education Act of 1965.

50. Ibid.

51. Statement of Francis Keppel, ibid., 81.

52. HEW staffer, interview, 18 October 2005.

53. Interview, 4 October 2005.

54. Interview, 3 October 2005.

55. Ibid.

56. Pell, “S. 1969—Introduction to a Bill to Amend the Higher Education Act of 1965.” See also Edward Kennedy, “Student Assistance,” Congressional Record (1972). According to one congressional staffer, “They fiddled with the idea of an entitlement, the original basic grant uses the word but it isn’t. Not for two reasons: It has a mechanism to deal with less than full funding and nowhere in it does it say legal right to funds. Others have and are enforceable” (interview, 3 October 2005).

57. Bennett, Michael J., When Dreams Came True: The GI Bill and the Making of Modern America (Washington, D.C., 1996)Google Scholar; Clark, Daniel A., “‘The Two Joes Meet: Joe College, Joe Veteran’: The GI Bill, College Education, and Postwar American Culture,” History of Education Quarterly 38, no. 2 (1998)Google Scholar; Mettler, Suzanne, Soldiers to Citizens: The GI Bill and the Making of the Greatest Generation (New York, 2005)Google Scholar; Kennedy, Edward M., “A Senator’s Perspective on American Education in a Global Economy,” Arizona Law Review 47, no. 1 (2005)Google Scholar. Higher education hearings are littered with references to the transformative power of the GI Bill. For example, Representative Dale Kildee (D-Mich.) noted that the GI Bill “transformed higher education in this country. No one went to college in the east side of Flint where I was born and raised until the GI Bill of rights came along.” Committee on Education and the Workforce, House of Representatives, Hearings on President Clinton’s Education Initiatives, 1st sess., 5 and 13 March 1997, 30. Senator Richard Bryan (D-Nev.): “I am one who happens to think that perhaps the seminal Federal program, the GI Bill, changed the lives of a generation of Americans in a way that was beyond anybody’s comprehension.” Committee on Finance, Education Tax Proposals, 1st sess., 16 April 1997, 22. For an alternative perspective, see Olson, “The GI Bill and Higher Education: Success and Surprise.”

58. Quoted in Olson, The GI Bill, the Veterans, and the Colleges, 33–34.

59. Fine, Benjamin, “Educators Praise Their GI Students,” New York Times, 11 October 1949Google Scholar. See also DeVane, William Clyde, Higher Education in Twentieth-Century America (Cambridge, Mass., 1965), 149.Google Scholar

60. Olson, The GI Bill, the Veterans, and the Colleges, 49.

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63. “The Osborn Committee Reports on Post-War Education for Service Men,” Congressional Digest 23, no. 3 (1944). FDR similarly emphasizes: “While the Federal Government should provide the necessary funds and should have the responsibility of seeing that they are spent providently and under generally accepted standards, the control of the educational processes and the certification of trainees and students should reside in the states and localities.” Roosevelt, “Message to Congress on Education of War Veterans, October 27, 1943.”

64. “Majority Report,” Congressional Digest 23, no. 3 (1944), 77.

65. Johnson, Lyndon Baines, “President’s Talk in Texas on Higher Education Act,” New York Times, 9 November 1965.Google Scholar

66. For example, Allan Cartter of the American Council on Education, an opponent of tax expenditures, wrote: “The major advantages of a tax deduction or tax credit proposal is that it is a means of aiding higher education without direct Government payments: this it avoids the possible charge of Federal interference.” In Higher Education Act of 1965, 53.

67. Brademas, John, The Politics of Education: Conflict and Consensus on Capitol Hill (Norman, Okla., 1987), 87–129.Google Scholar

68. Interview, 4 October 2005.

69. Rod Grams (R-Minn.), 143 Congressional Record S8415, 31 July 1997.

70. Hearings on President Clinton’s Education Initiatives, 31.

71. Interview, 11 October 2005.

72. Clinton spelled out his plan in his commencement address at Princeton University: “Today, I announce one more element to complete our college strategy and make those two years of college as universal as four years of high school. A way to do it by giving families a tax credit targeted to achieve that goal. And making clear that this opportunity requires responsibility to receive it” (William Jefferson Clinton, “Excerpts from Address to Princeton Graduates,” New York Times, 5 June 1996.

73. The legislation specified that the maximum Lifetime Learning Credit was 20 percent of the first $5,000 (or $1,000 total) until 1998, when it moved up to $10,000. “Analysis of Proposed Tax Incentives for Higher Education,” Joint Committee on Taxation, 1997.

74. Senator William Roth (R-Del.) and Senator Mary Landrieu (D-La.), respectively, in Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997—Conference Report, 1997.

75. Senator Paul Wellstone (D-Minn.) “Every single financial aid officer you want to talk to, everyone involved in financial aid will tell you we should have expanded the Pell Grants,” in ibid. See also Committee on Labor and Human Resources, Pell Grants and Tax Policy: Which Approach Serves Which Population? 1st sess., 14 March 1997, 23.

76. “Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997,” CIS Legislative History, 1997.

77. McNulty, John K., “Tax Policy and Tuition Credit Legislation: Federal Income Tax Allowances for Personal Costs of Higher Education,” California Law Review 31, no. 1 (1973): 14.Google Scholar

78. “Income Tax Credit for Tuition Urged by College Treasurer,” New York Times, 30 November 1941.

79. “Federal Tax Incentives for Higher Education,” Harvard Law Review 76, no. 2 (1962), Hearings on General Revenue Revision Before the House Committee on Ways and Means, 1st sess., 1953; “Second Report to the President,” President’s Committee on Education Beyond High School, 1957.

80. McNulty, “Tax Policy and Tuition Credit Legislation.”

81. “College Student Aid,” Congress and the Nation, vol. 5 (1979) (Washington, D.C., 1979).

82. Subcommittee on Postsecondary Education of the Committee on Education and Labor, Remarks of the President on Administration’s Proposal for Aid to Financing Higher Education in the Appendix to the Middle Income Student Assistance Act., 2d sess., 9, 16, 22, and 23, February, 284.

83. Subcommittee on Postsecondary Education of the Committee on Education and Labor, Middle Income Student Assistance Act, 95th Congress, 9, 16, 22, and 23 February 1978, 258.

84. Higher Education Act of 1965.

85. Interview with Governor Al Quie, 21 October 2005.

86. Interview, 3 October 2005.

87. “Statement of the House Committee on the Budget on the Revenue Reconciliation Act of 1997,” House of Representatives, Committee on Ways and Means, 1997, 285.

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