When the new GI Bill was signed into law last summer, advocates said its education benefits would significantly expand veterans' higher-education options. Beneficiaries would receive substantially more money than they did under older programs, enough to pay for the most expensive public institution in their state instead of only covering…

When Congress passed the GI Bill, it linked the accreditation process with the distribution of federal funds. As Congress saw it, accreditation would ensure accountability without subjecting institutions to harmful external controls. While accreditation began as a voluntary system, it has now become virtually mandatory. Policymakers and trustees…

What higher education state policy issues will be at the forefront of discussion and legislative activity throughout the United States in 2010? Provided herein is the consensus of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) state relations and policy analysis staff, informed by continual scanning of state policy activities,…

This book tracks the dramatic outcomes of the federal government's growing involvement in higher education between World War I and the 1970s, and the conservative backlash against that involvement from the 1980s onward. Using cutting-edge analysis, Christopher Loss recovers higher education's central importance to the larger social and political…

The 1944 G.I. Bill is often thought to have democratized higher education in the United States. This paper reviews evidence showing that the G.I. Bill's impact on education enrollments was more limited than is generally recognized. It attributes the gap between the law's perceived and documented effects to the symbolism surrounding postwar…

An educator who benefited from the 1944 GI Bill reflects on the value of the legislation for America and suggests that it is again time to consider what new federal policy initiatives might have as important an impact. (MSE)