Too much college? History suggests otherwise

Jay Matthews:

President Obama is a snob for insisting higher education should be everyone's goal. Some of us blame high-school dropout rates on students tuning out the pro-college assemblies and loudspeaker announcements.

It was that way in 1943 when an Army survey found that only 7 percent of enlisted men expected to go back to school full-time after the war and only 17 percent wanted to go part-time. Even when the new G.I. Bill -- the most generous education law ever passed -- began paying full tuition and some living expenses, few seemed interested. Only 15,000 veterans were using it 15 months after it passed.

The Saturday Evening Post declared it a failure, said Suzanne Mettler, in her book "Soldiers to Citizens: The G.I. Bill and the Making of the Greatest Generation." The magazine said: "The guys aren't buying it. They say 'education' means 'books,' any way you slice it, and that's for somebody else."

Posted by Jim Zellmer at April 1, 2012 1:29 AM
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