OMAHA, NEBR., February 17, 1960. Congressman OLIN E. TEAGUE, Chairman, Committee on Veterans' Affairs, House of Representatives: I urge support for Yarborough bill proposing extension of Public Law 550. CARL M. REINERT, S.J., President, the Creighton University. UNIVERSITY OF SANTA CLARA, Hon. CHARLES S. GUBSER, Recommend extension Federal veterans educational benefits as provided Senate bill 1138 as introduced by Senator Ralph Yarborough. Do not favor proposed amendment of loan type program which would change payment of educational and training allowance to veterans. Provisions Public Law 550, 82d Congress most satisfactory and should be extended. PATRICK A. DONOHOE, S.J., President. CHICO STATE COLLEGE, Chico, Calif., February 19, 1960. Hon. OLIN E. TEAGUE, House of Representatives, Washington, D.C. DEAR MR. TEAGUE: As your Committee on Veterans' Affairs considers extension of title 38 (Public Law 550) and as long as the Federal Government has selective service we would like for you to know that a tremendous and overwhelming number of college administrators feel this should be done and is highly desirable. No one needs to make the point today that all people with capacity and ambition to have a college education should be encouraged in every way, including financial, to get that educational opportunity. I have just returned from traveling in a number of States, recruiting staff members for our college. It is almost disheartening to find that the supply is not adequate for the job and I know, of course, this is not limited to college teachers; it is in every major field. Many young people cannot go to college because of lack of funds. For everyone of these who does go through the cost is more than repaid through the individual's increased earning and productive power. We sincerely hope that your committee will find it possible to extend this bill for as long as the draft law continues. Sincerely, GLENN KENDALL, President of the College. UNIVERSITY OF DENVER, Denver, Colo., February 16, 1960. Hon. OLIN TEAGUE, House of Representatives, Washington, D.C. DEAR MR. TEAGUE: It does not appear likely that I shall have the opportunity to be in Washington during the hearings which your committee is conducting on S. 1138-the so-called peacetime GI bill. I regret this very much because I would so much enjoy the opportunity for renewal of a valued personal acquaintance as well as the chance to speak in behalf of this bill. I hope, therefore, that you will permit me to make my thoughts known to you via this letter and know that I shall be pleased to be of any other assistance possible should you wish to call upon me. At the outset I should like to make it clear that my comments do not reflect in any way an official position of the University of Denver. By the same token, I do not speak as president-elect of the American Personnel and Guidance Association. There are certain items, as I shall point out, on which I believe I can quite safely predict that the vast majority of the 10,000 members of the American Personnel und Guidance Association would find themselves in quite complete agreement. The essential provisions of S. 1138 reflect the careful study of the entire program of veterans' educational benefits which you have made. In this respect I believe the bill is well-designed to prevent some of the abuses which crept into the operation of earlier veterans legislation. Having been intimately associated with higher education, and with special interest in the education of veterans since 1946, it is my personal belief that our country would be well-served by the passage of a bill of this type. There have been several studies which have clearly brought out the fact that many veterans after World War II would not have pursued specialized training or higher education had it not been for the assistance afforded them under the laws enacted by the Congress. For most of these veterans the benefits created the possibility of attaining an educational level that had seemed a hopelessly unattainable goal before their war service. I am sure it has never been necessary to argue the values of a well-educated citizenry. This has been a keystone of American democracy. With the everincreasing demands of world participation, as well as our breathtaking strides in technological development, the need for the highest possible level of education in all fields is self-evident. From all sides we continue to hear the demand for young men and women with specialized skills and higher education in all lines of human endeavor. It has been said that our most precious natural resource is to be found in the educated intelligence of our citizens. Certainly unless this natural resource is developed as widely as possible, we cannot hope to exploit fully the potential of our physical resources. By the same token, we cannot continue our position of world leadership without a citizenry which is conscious of its human responsibilities and knowledgeable in the pursuit of international understanding and amity. Although we refer to S. 1138 as a peacetime bill, in actuality we must never lose sight of the fact that the men and women currently serving in our Armed Forces are participants in a cold war which has had at times all the features of a shooting war. And with the universal uncertainties and anxieties caused by the unwillingness of certain countries to avow by act as well as word their peaceful intentions, there has never been a moment of guarantee that the cold war would not give way to a hot war. In this light, it seems to me that a national obligation to those who have served and are serving through this period is just as real as it may have been in 1945. It is considerations such as I have suggested above that lead me to suggest to you that the passage of a bill such as S. 1138 would be a proper recognition both of the service to our country and the benefit to our country that would result from the uses of the bill by the men and women affected. With your permission I should like to comment a bit more extensively upon section 1962 of subchapter VII of the bill, dealing with educational and vocational counseling. Here, though I am not authorized to do so, I believe I speak the minds of the vast majority of professionally qualified persons in urging that the present bill be modified so as to include provisions for counseling similar to those set forth in Public Law 634, the War Orphans Educational Assistance Act. In Public Law 634 the provision is that counseling will be required but that the orphan and the parent or guardian are not required to follow the counselor's recommendation. It seems to me that in this provision Congress achieved an admirable and wholly desirable solution of the problem which I know was one of your earlier concern; namely, the fear that the requirement of counseling might appear to be a limitation of personal rights. As the provision for counseling has operated in Public Law 634, no restriction of individual rights has been placed. Rather, the important object has been the exposure of the individual seeking training to a learning experience in which he is able, with competent professional assistance, to evaluate his own potentialities and limitations, the various educational and vocational opportunities open to him, and in the final analysis, to make his own choices. In ths light, counseling may extend rather than limit personal rights insofar as the veteran would be acting on more complete information about himself and his opportunities than he would otherwise have. There would be the further assurance that veterans would be given complete advice as to their benefits available. This would be particularly true relative to cutoff dates and other benefits to which they might be entitled under the law. Even under current legislation we are still observing considerable of the exploratory experiences which proved wasteful of the veteran's eligibility. I know from our conversations that you have been greatly concerned with the amount of such energy and dollar waste that resulted under earlier forms of legislation. At least, with the provision of counseling, some insurance would be provided that the best possible effort on the behalf of the Veterans' Administration would have been made for the veteran. A simple translation of this in dollar terms can be seen in the case of a single veteran without dependents who could receive $110 per month for 36 months under the provisions of S. 1138. This represents a total of $3,960. The cost of counseling such a veteran might average about $75. There is ample evidence to show that objectives selected with the assistance of counseling are far more apt to remain permanent objectives, and that the educational achievement of counseled students is significantly superior to that of uncounseled students. The investment in counseling, at a cost of about 2 percent of the cost of the investment in the veterans education, is a small insurance premium indeed when evaluated in the light of the potential cost of the entire program, should this bill pass. In the final analysis, the veteran still would have the right to decide whether or not to accept the counselor's recommendation under the provicion such as I have proposed. It would actually protect the veteran's interests in giving him assurance that he will not waste the substance of the benefits provided him in chasing educational and vocational will-o'-the-wisps which will not, in the long run, provide him with constructive lifetime satisfactions. I am reliably informed that counseling service available in a community has frequently served as a deterrent to the creation of phony or submarginal types of schools. It is generally the practice of counselors to visit such facilities and inspect them at firsthand in order to determine whether their program will meet a particular kind of need. The school which is not operating at a fully legitimate level does not welcome such visitation and in this sense the counseling requirement could serve as additional protection of the veterans' educational opportunities. Although I can document this final statement only on the basis of many conversations with veterans who benefited from the original GI bill and the Korean bill, I believe that the enactment of S. 1138 would do much to enhance the longer period of military service, and hence the value of the program in the national interest. I would predict that many young men would willingly extend their service to the full 2-year period or longer with the knoweldge that upon discharge they would have the benefits of an assured educational program. Rather than being an unwelcome interruption of normal lifetime pursuits, the necessary and required military service would become a means for opening educational opportunity to many who now see it as unattainable. I am deeply grateful to you for giving me this chance to voice these views to you and hope that I have been of some assistance. If I can help in any other way, I hope you will call upon me. With all good wishes, I remain, Very sincerely yours, DANIEL D. FEDER, Dean of Students. The CHAIRMAN. Our first witness will be Senator Ralph Yarborough, who is the author of the Senate bill, and certainly I want to commend him for the work he did on the Senate bill. I do not think, Ralph, we would be holding these hearings over here if it had not been for the work you did. Mr. SMITH. Good or bad. The CHAIRMAN. Good or bad, he is responsible for it. STATEMENT OF HON. RALPH YARBOROUGH, A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF TEXAS Senator YARBOROUGH. Mr. Chairman and members of the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs, it is a great privilege and pleasure to appear before the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs which devotes its attention to the affairs of veterans, on behalf of the cold war GI bill. I want to express my gratitude to the chairman for his generous remarks, but of course I cannot take, and will not attempt to take, sole credit for the legislation which passed the Senate, and which I think of as being the greatest act as of this date, of the 86th Congress, because there were 26 cosponsors on this measure, as introduced into the Senate on February 19, 1959, more than 25 percent of the Senators from every part of the country, and including some Senators from both political parties. Also, this bill was on behalf of the many young Americans serving in our military establishments without receiving any educational or other governmental help after their discharge at this time. This country needs their full educational development, for to train men is to aid the Nation. Mr. Chairman, it was also a pleasure, in working on this bill on the Senate side, to be associated with persons there who had devoted a great deal of time to the original GI bill. A number of Senators were in the House when the original concept was developed during World War II, and some of them were cosponsors of the original bill as well as cosponsors of the cold war GI bill passed by the Senate. The principles and concepts of the World War II GI bill were further developed by the chairman of this committee, and this committee in the formulation of the Korean conflict bill. And we had, over there, helping very assiduously with the cold war bill and making very able arguments in the days of debate in the Senate, some of those who were in the House and helped originate this idea and bring it to fruition with the type of postservice training that the GI bill provides. Now, S. 1138, which the Senate passed by an overwhelming vote, provides for educational readjustment for 44 million veterans of the post-Korean cold war, that is, from January 31, 1955, the termination date of such training under the Korean GI bill, to July 1, 1963, the date of termination of the draft, who served as the Senate bill provides, for longer than 6 months at a rate of 12 days of schooling for each day of service, not to exceed 3 years' schooling. I might point out here, Mr. Chairman, that the Korean GI bill had the limit of 3 months of service. That is a tougher bill on the veteran. He has to serve at least more than 6 months now to come under the provisions of this bill that was passed by the Senate. The CHAIRMAN. Would you expect that if the draft were extended the bill would be extended beyond 1963? Senator YARBOROUGH. I cannot look into the seeds of time, Mr. Chairman, and say which grain will grow and which will not. I think it would be a just thing to do if we had the same economic circumstances prevalent then, that we have now, and if we had the same lack of service by a majority of the young men that we have now. I will touch on that more fully in the course of this. I will point. out that only 45 percent of the young men serve at this time. Now this payment rate is the same in dollars as the Korean rate, $110 a month for single men up to $165 a month for married men with two children. But even the Korean monthly allowance of $110— and this was proven by the testimony on the Senate side, concerning the present value of that allowance, in 1952 dollars-would be only $78.40. The purchasing power of the 1952 dollar has gone down that much; so in keeping this allowance at the amount in dollars that the Korean bill provided in 1952 you are only giving the veteran 78 percent as much in purchasing power. In the meantime, I would like to point out, the average tuition rates of American colleges, all 1,400 of all types, public and private, have gone up 72 percent in the last 8 years. That is an average across the board. Under the Korean plan, unlike the World War II plan, the veteran's tuition is paid by him to the college of his choice. He picks his college and has to pay his tuition out of his educational allowance. These payments run from $110 a month for single veterans up to the maximum of $165 per month for married veterans with two children, and also provide for guaranteed home and farm loans, and for vocational rehabilitation for disabled veterans. There are no guaranteed business loans, as there were under the World War II and Korean GI bills. I think, Mr. Chairman, as was said on the floor of the Senate yesterday in the statement by the able Senator from Alabama, Mr. Sparkman, who was a Member of this House and who helped originate the first GI bill-the World War II bill-I think, as he stated, in his opinion, there has been no more constructive act by this Government in any particular field in the course of its legislation, because the GI bill was so all-embracing after World War II, giving the veteran the chance to go into business, take on-the-job training, business training, or to go to school. Because military service creates unique problems for those who enter the Military Establishment, as compared with those who remain in civil life, governments have always recognized the special situations of the veteran of military service. Until the establishment of the World War II GI bill, however, consideration for their situations was generally expressed in law by some kind of bonus-type program. Then came the World War II GI bill. Its program provided for important readjustment benefits which were not intended as mere cash income, |