Veterans Day gains new significance on college campuses

Even before World War II ended, Congress passed the Serviceman’s Readjustment Act of 1944 which became popularly known as the G.I. Bill. Under the act, about 2.3 million veterans attended colleges and universities, greatly increasing the percentage of adults with bachelor’s degrees and unleashing a tidal wave of economic prosperity.

While not on the same scale as the post-WWII generation, today’s veterans returning from the recently ended wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are taking advantage of a new G.I. Bill as well as a university campus culture that is increasingly welcoming to veterans—resulting in a significant surge in college enrollment.

According to The New York Times, since the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill took effect in 2009, 877,000 people, mainly veterans and their dependents, have received $23.7 billion in education benefits. Veterans Administration statistics show a more than doubling in Post-9/11 G.I. Bill participation: from 365,640 in 2010 to 754,229 in 2013.

Many of the nation’s four-year colleges and universities, as well as community colleges, in an effort to make themselves attractive to prospective student veterans eligible for the G.I Bill, have set up veteran’s centers with specialized counselors and other support services.

Some campus veteran service organizations have been started by veterans themselves, who felt a huge disconnect on returning to civilian life, and especially college.

“The worst two years of my life were the two just out of the military,” Matt Rich, a sophomore political science major at Montana State University, Billings (MSUB) told local TV station KTVQ. “It was incredibly hard to relate to people. I could pass 100 people in a day, and maybe talk to one person. I didn’t feel like I belonged.”

Rich, a 29-year-old Army veteran who did tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, has helped champion efforts to bolster veteran support services at MSUB by re-organizing the university’s Veterans Service Club.

“My time in the military has ended, but that doesn’t mean my service to our nation and those around me has,” Rich said.

A national advocacy organization, the Student Veterans of America (SVA), which began in 2008 as a grassroots collection of student veterans pushing for passage of the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill, has grown to more than 1,100 chapters nationwide. According to SVA statistics, 85 percent of student veterans are 24 or older and 47 percent have a family. That may be one of the reasons why the surge in college enrollment for veterans hasn’t extended to America’s elite colleges and universities. In fact, it’s going in the opposite direction. Of the 31 colleges in the Consortium on Financing in Higher Education, which include Harvard, Princeton, and other Ivy League schools, the total veteran enrollment in 2013 was 168—down from 232 in 2011.

But some elite colleges, such as Yale University, are making efforts to recruit veterans. Yale admissions officers have reached out to community colleges with large veteran populations. They’ve also visited military bases in recent years.

“Having more veterans on campus will enrich the Yale community,” columnist Viveca Morris wrote in the Yale Daily News. “Today the military is practically invisible in much of the country, including here at Yale. Given that only one-half of 1 percent of the U.S. population serves in the military today, this civilian-soldier gap is not surprising. But it’s not good either.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.