Honoring our Veterans: Post 9/11 GI Bill
Today, President Obama and Vice President Biden joined Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki, Senator Jim Webb (D-VA) and others at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA to mark the implementation of the Post-9/11 GI Bill. The bill provides people who have served in the armed forces since the attacks of September 11, 2001 with the most generous educational benefits package since the original GI Bill of 1944. The maximum benefit under the Post-9/11 GI Bill offers veterans, service members, Reservists and Guard members the ability to receive an in-state, undergraduate education at a public institution at no cost.
Here's an excerpt from the President's remarks:
“…The GI Bill was approved just weeks after D-Day, and carried with it a simple promise to all who had served: You pick the school, we'll help pick up the bill. And what followed was not simply an opportunity for our veterans -- it was a transformation for our country. By 1947, half of all Americans enrolled in college were veterans.
“Ultimately, this would lead to three Presidents, three Supreme Court justices, 14 Nobel Prize winners, and two dozen Pulitzer Prize winners. But more importantly, it produced hundreds of thousands of scientists and engineers, doctors and nurses -- the backbone of the largest middle class in history. All told, nearly 8 million Americans were educated under the original GI Bill, including my grandfather.
”No number can sum up this sea change in our society. Reginald Wilson, a fighter pilot from Detroit, said, "I didn't know anyone who went to college. I never would have gone to college had it not been for the GI Bill." H.G. Jones, a Navy man from North Carolina, said, "What happened in my rural Caswell County community happened all over the country ¼ going to college was no longer a novelty." Indeed, one of the men who went to college on the GI Bill, as I mentioned, was my grandfather, and I would not be standing here today if that opportunity had not led him West in search of opportunity.
”So we owe the same obligations to this generation of servicemen and women, as was afforded that previous generation. That is the promise of the post-1911 [sic] GI Bill. It's driven by the same simple logic that drove the first GI Bill -- you pick the school, we'll help pick up the bill. And looking out at the audience today, I'm proud to see so many veterans who will be able to pursue their education with this new support from the American people.
”And this is even more important than it was in 1944. The first GI Bill helped build a post-war economy that has been transformed by revolutions in communications and technology. And that's why the post-1911 -- 9/11 GI Bill must give today's veterans the skills and training they need to fill the jobs of tomorrow. Education is the currency that can purchase success in the 21st century, and this is the opportunity that our troops have earned.”
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