posted by admin on May 16
STARKVILLE, Miss. — By the time he completed his four-year stint in the military three summers ago, Frank Wills had gotten used to taking orders, carrying a rifle and taking pictures of dead bodies as a combat photographer.
He knew how to be a Marine. He hadn’t a clue how a Marine becomes a college student.
Neither did anyone else on campus. Advisers at one school Wills attended gave him incorrect information. Officials at a second offered no help. Often, he says, he felt like “the new kid who didn’t fit in.”
The Serviceman’s Readjustment Act of 1944, better known as the GI Bill, helped turn a college education into a right of middle-class America. It covered the cost for millions of World War II veterans as compensation for having disrupted their lives to serve.
Today, with tuition climbing, and a college degree increasingly the ticket to economic security, the promise of money for education is no less important to service members. The Department of Defense says 95 percent of Marines, Army, Navy, Air Force and U.S. Coast Guard sign up for the GI Bill when they enlist.
For many, like Wills, 28, it is the reason they join. Yet his experience, and those of other recent veterans, suggests that often the road from combat to college can be riddled with potholes.
Read the full article here.
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