light of the intent of Congress may be made by an individual or educational institution affected by the regulation.

NOTE. It is believed that so long as educational payments are made to individual veterans, who are responsible for payment of their own fees and the like, few regulations will be necessary, and these may be easily arrived at by consultation between the Board and the Administrator. However, the intent of Congress to prohibit interference with education can be assuredly sustained only when the right to appeal to the courts is open.

OTHER CONSIDERATIONS

1. Relationship with other scholarship proposals

There are substantial arguments for a program of Federal scholarship aid to students, on the basis of ability and need, without reference to military service. The potential abilities represented, particularly, by young women who ordinarily do not enter military service in large numbers, are stressed in this connection. The above program is not designed to meet the needs pointed out by those who favor a general scholarship program. It is intended to meet the special and added problem caused by the enforced interruption of education for military service. A program to correct inequalities or deficiencies in educational opportunity not caused by enforced interruption for military service should, however, be prepared in the light of the provisions and effects of the above program, and be separately considered on its merits by the appropriate committees of the Congress having jurisdiction.

2. Financial cost to the Nation

While accurate figures are not available, the limitation of all payments to students under this program to $800 per academic year would, we believe, result in a cost per year per student of about one-half that of the World War II program. This is on the assumption that this amount is near the average of World II subsistence payments, and that the additional costs for tuition, books, supplies, would be eliminated, along with the administrative, contract, and accounting staffs essential to this phase of the program.1 It would also eliminate much costly accounting and paper work on the part of the colleges. The numbers participating in the program would also be very heavily reduced by the requirement of demonstrated ability, and by placing all responsibility for payment of fees and the like on the veteran student. It is probable that under the above conditions a maximum of 200,000 from each universal service class of 800,000 would participate. Assuming that all this group continued under the program for four academic years, the maximum annual cost after 4 years of operation of the program would be $640 million a year (800,000 students at any one time, times $800 annual subsidy). This is a very substantial sum, but it is supportable by the Nation, and far less than the minimum possible cost of an extension of the World War II program. The addition of a requirement of demonstrated need for assistance would reduce the above materially.

S. Time limitations

It is recommended that, under conditions of universal military service, the individual completing his period of service be required to enter the above educational program in not more than 2 years from date of discharge or release from active service, and that eligibility for assistance lapse after not more than 7 years from date of discharge or release from active service. Exception to this rule should be made only in case of recall to active military service, in which case an extension of eligibility (but not of the total period of subsidy) might be made to the extent of the time in military service.

The law should also contain a provision to the effect that the President may by proclamation, or the Congress by joint resolution, suspend the assistance provided as it applies to those entering active military service after a specified date. No such proclamation or resolution should, however, be effective for those entering active military service during a period in which the Selective Service

1 The average subsistence cost per veteran in the World War II program is $917. This figure includes in the average several thousand veterans who receive no subsistence payments whatever but are counted because of tuition or similar payments made in their behalf; and those who receive less than full subsistence because they are taking only parttime programs. The actual average full-time subsistence payment, therefore, is substan

tially above this figure.

System is operating for induction into other than a universal military training program. (This provision would make possible the elimination of educational assistance to those entering active military service as a profession or occupation.)

4. Responsibilities of the military, the student, and educators

The above program assumes that the leaders of the armed services, the individuals involved, and educational leaders, will understand and carry out certain responsibilities. It should be clearly understood that this is not a program of reward for military service, but one of assistance undertaken by the Nation to minimize the loss to the Nation of trained leadership represented by an enforced interruption of education. Further, that it is not and is not intended to be a complete subsidy, but one which will make completion of education possible to those who are able to profit from it and willing by their own efforts to supplement it when necessary. If this is clearly understood, it is believed that individuals desirous of completing their education can, while in the armed services, accumulate sufficient funds so that (with the assistance provided and his own further efforts if necessary) no qualified individual will be denied by the requirements of military service the opportunity to carry on the educational program of his choice at the institution of his choice.

Such a program is, we believe, sound in the interest of the Nation. It involves no threat of control over education or individuals engaged in education. It does not involve a veterans' program in matters of either control or financing of higher education as such. It is a clear-cut, long-range program, which would be eliminated when required active military service is eliminated, and come into operation again should it be reinstituted.

LETTER FROM COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATION, STATE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION, HARTFORD, CONN.

Dr. EDGAR FULLER,

SEPTEMBER 25, 1951.

Executive Secretary, National Council of Chief State School Officers,

Washington 6, D. C.

DEAR DR. FULLER: This is in response to your letter of September 20 regarding S. 1940. I would call your attention, first, to the enclosed copy of a letter recently sent by our supervisor of veterans' education to the secretary-treasurer of the National Association of State Approval Agencies in which general comments. have been made with which I am in substantial agreement. Your testimony expresses more completely and more specifically our attitude toward the existing program and toward the proposed extension to veterans now in service.

It is our feeling that tremendous economies and substantially increased efficiency in the administration of the program would be effected by the following steps:

1. Transfer of Federal authority on all matters affecting educational institutions within the several States from the Veterans' Administration to the United States Office of Education.

2. Assignment of Federal educational benefits to veterans on a scholarship basis, with authority vested exclusively in the several States for the determination of those institutions eligible to accept veterans under the scholarship plan. 3. Legislative provision that each State be required to vest in an existing educational agency within the State the authority to determine the eligibility of educational institutions within the State to train veterans under the program; or, where no appropriate educational agency exists, that the governor be required to appoint, on the basis of professional qualification, an individual or individuals charged with the responsibility and vested with the necessary authority to determine eligibility of institutions; and, in either case, that such agency be empowered and required to exercise such supervision as may be necessary to insure maintenance of satisfactory standards of educational performance in all approved institutions.

4. Provision for reimbursement of the various States by the Federal Government for such portion of the expense of administering the program as would not ordinarily be deemed necessary for adequate educational supervision within the State, were no program for veterans' education in existence. It is recognized that modification of this provision would probably be necessary, in some

cases, as a practical matter since the State should assume some financial responsibility for the educational supervision involved with its veterans.

5. Provision for payment, to those charged with responsibility for direct and indirect supervision of educational institutions, of salaries on a high enough scale to attract to those positions men of the highest professional training, ability, and integrity.

6. Retention by the Veterans' Administration of "supervision of the veteran" in all matters pertaining to determination of eligibility, issuance of scholarship certificates or other evidence of eligibility, vocational and educational guidance, changes of objective, and similar matters, provided the services of professionally trained personnel are obtained especially in the area of guidance.

The National Association of State Approval Agencies has compiled a list of recommended changes, deletions, and additions to S. 1940, Eighty-second Congress, first session, which we have just received. It is evident that many of the changes embody thinking similar to that expressed in your testimony, although a first reading indicates that some alterations have been perhaps too hastily drafted. The very volume of the detailed suggestions lends weight to your proposal that it might be well to consider drafting an entirely new bill which will include the suggestions of both the National Association of State Approval Agencies and the National Council of Chief State School Officers. Please be assured of our complete sympathy with the effort to obtain a better bill, and of our desire to offer any assistance we can to that end.

Sincerely yours,

F. E. ENGLEMAN, Commissioner of Education.

STATEMENT OF MRS. MARIE JORDAN, NATIONAL LEGISLATIVE CHAIRMAN,

GOLD STAR WIVES OF AMERICA

The Gold Star Wives of America believe that the veteran of the Korean conflict should definitely be assisted with his education which was interrupted when he entered the service, and we are, therefore, most anxious to see early action taken upon S. 1940.

As your committee makes its study of this bill, we ask that you consider the inclusion of a very important amendment. There are many men who gave their lives on the Korean battlefront. The widows of these men are now the heads of their respective households, and sooner or later will be forced to seek employment outside the home in order to properly provide for themselves and their children.

A course in stenography, bookkeeping, or some other form of vocational training would help them greatly in assuming their responsibilities which have been made much greater by the death of their husbands.

We recommend, therefore, that the widow of a man who dies in the Korean conflict be given the exact amount of educational training that her husband would have received under the provisions of S. 1940-if he had returned.

From our daily contact with widows of deceased servicemen we see again and again how some form of educational training would have lightened the burdens of those who lost their husbands in World War II. In another 8 or 10 years after their insurance payments have all been collected and they no longer receive social-security payments for themselves and their children-many of these women will be totally dependent upon the $75 per month they receive from the Veterans' Administration, unless they are capable of finding suitable employment. How a little training now-no more than their husbands would have received if they had returned-would help these women to make a place for themselves in the business world where they must of necessity compete with the able-bodied veteran who has been given every opportunity to advance.

Average age for the widow of a serviceman who died in Korea is 27 years. Children of the Korean serviceman range from a few months of age upward-but the average is 4 years old. While her children are small, the widow could arrange for some type of training course to equip her for gainful employment when her children are a little older.

Is not the widow of a deceased serviceman as much entitled to this opportunity for educational training as the returning serviceman? Both are in similar situations. Both are now setting forth to get a new start in life.

We would so greatly appreciate your careful consideration of this proposed amendment to S. 1940, which we believe would be so very beneficial to the families of America's deceased servicemen.

STATEMENT OF WALTER J. MASON, MEMBER, NATIONAL LEGISLATIVE COMMITTEE, AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR, SEPTEMBER 21, 1951

The American Federation of Labor endorses the effort of the Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare to extend GI education and training benefits to veterans who have served on or after June 27, 1950. Action on this matter has been long overdue, and further delay cannot be justified in all fairness to these veterans, many of whom have served in the Korean conflict. Since 1944 there has been ample opportunity to observe the operation and evaluate the effectiveness of Public Law 346. During this time the American Federation of Labor has made its observations and evaluations, and we appreciate the opportunity afforded to us by the committee to present our statement.

The over-all benefits that the veterans of World War II, as well as the Nation as a whole, have derived from the GI bill must be recognized by every fair-minded citizen. Untold numbers of veterans who might otherwise have been unable to obtain an education have been able to do so with the assistance of GI benefits. As a result of the various GI training programs, many veterans have acquired trades and skills that have enabled them to secure higher standards of living. However, as in any program that involves over $14 billion and close to 9 million people, there is considerable room for improvement in the education and training provisions of the GI bill. The prevalent abuses-abuses which have often been a fraud upon the veteran and a theft from the taxpayer-have been pointed out not only by members of the trade-union movement but by congressional committees and the Veterans' Administration. In the light of world developmentsthe war in Korea, a standing United States Armed Force of 32 million men, and our manpower commitments to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization-we foresee the education and training of veterans as a long-term program. It is thus imperative that the abuses that have existed under Public Law 346 be eliminated and the veterans education and training program be extended on sound principles. One of the main concerns of the American Federation of Labor in the GI bill is in the field of manual and technical training—the trade schools, on-the-job training, and apprenticeship training. It is in this field, where over half of the GI training has been given, that the abuses have been most frequent.

The committee is already familiar with the stories of the profit trade schools. Thousands of such schools sprang up after 1944 with the sole aim of making a quick killing from the thousands of veterans seeking vocational training. The graft and corruption that took place among the profit trade schools has been verified by the Veterans' Administration and the General Accounting Office. Many trade-unions have reported that the graduates of the GI trade schools are unable to qualify for the trade. In some instances as high as 95 percent of the graduates of certain trade schools have been forced to look for work along lines other than the one for which they trained. The present shortage of manpower in some of the skilled trades is further evidence that much of the training was of poor caliber and has not contributed in any great measure to the defense production effort.

In many cases, on-the-job training has been little more than a subsidy for employers' payrolls. Establishments, ranging from pool halls to banks and insurance companies, have employed veterans under the guise of on-the-job training. As a result they were able to pay cheap wages, with the Government footing the bill for the difference. The actual training that the veteran received is highly questionable.

Some of the less publicized abuses in veterans' training have been in the apprenticeship program under the GI bill. Sound standards of apprenticeship training, which have been developed over the years by the Bureau of Apprenticeship Training, United States Department of Labor, in cooperation with the American Federation of Labor, have been ignored by the Veterans' Administration. Apprenticeship programs under the able sponsoring of Federal and State apprenticeship agencies have been circumvented by Veterans' Administration officials, thus making it difficult to maintain minimum apprenticeship standards. However, we would like to point out that in the thousands of bona fide apprenticeship training programs there have been few complaints and practically no abuses.

The question may well be asked: Why have such conditions in the Veterans' training program been allowed to exist and what brought them into being?

The roots of the problem lie in the existing method of approving and supervising training institutions and programs and the lack of cooperation between the Veterans' Administration and organizations that have had years of expe

rience in vocational and apprenticeship training. In the 1950 Convention of the American Federation of Labor, the Executive Council reported:

*** * * On the whole, there have been practically no functional relations between veterans' training and the trade-union movement, or between veterans' training and the Federal apprenticeship program. * Men have been registered in trade schools which have little or no connection with a craft for which the worker allegedly is being trained. There has been little consideration given by counselors of the potentialities for employment in the crafts in which they have been advising veterans to take training."

Under the present law, the approval and supervision of training institutions and programs is delegated to the States. The States in turn appoint approving agencies. Public Law 346, as well as paragraph 4 of S. 1940, states that the Administrator, whenever he deems possible, shall use the facilities of the State apprenticeship agencies in training on the job when such training is of 1 year's duration or more. According to an information bulletin from the Office of Vocational Rehabilitation and Education, dated February 3, 1950, there are 32 States in which the authority to approve all institutional, on-the-job, and apprenticeship training is vested in a single agency, usually the board of education. Regardless of the sincerity and competency of the people in boards of education, few of them have had any experience in vocational training. Without consultation with the Federal or State apprenticeship committees, the tradeunion groups in the State, and other qualified vocational training people, the approving agencies embarked on a veterans' training program that departed from any semblance of sound vocational training principles and methods. Often, with the encouragement of Veterans' Administration officials who merely wanted to establish as many training facilities as possible with no regard for the caliber of training, they approved trade schools that did not teach a trade; they authorized on-the-job training that offered no practical training; and they permitted apprenticeship training that was not in accord with Federal and State apprenticeship standards.

In order to eliminate the abuses that have existed in the veterans' training program, S. 1940 must reach into the very heart of the situation that has contributed to the abuses. It must place the training program in the hands of qualified people. The American Federation, in its desire to secure future veterans in the program the high level of training that they deserve, offers the following recommendation to the committee: Paragraph 4 of S. 1940 be changed to read:

"From time to time the Administrator shall secure from the appropriate agency of each State a list of the educational and training institutions (excluding industrial establishments), within such jurisdiction, which are qualified to furnish education and training, which institutions shall be deemed qualified and approved to furnish education and training to such persons as shall enroll under this part: Provided, That all institutions offering instruction in manual and mechanical training must be approved by the State agency in conjunction with and advisory committee, established on State and local levels, composed of representatives of labor and industry: Provided further, That the Administrator, from time to time, shall secure from the State apprenticeship council, or the Federal committee on apprenticeship if no State agency exists, a list of all industrial establishments, within such jurisdiction, which are qualified and equipped to furnish apprenticeship and other training on the job, which establishments shall be deemed qualified and approved to furnish training to such persons as shall enroll under this part."

The effect of this provision would be to place the approval and supervision of all on-the-job and apprenticeship training in the hands of people who have successfully handled such programs for many years. The veteran will be assured of proper training and supervision on the job and will be able to look forward to gainful employment in the field for which he trains. The opportunity to exploit veterans or subsidize payrolls will be eliminated, as it always has been under bona fide apprenticeship programs.

The approval and supervision of trade schools by a committee of labor and industry representatives, working in cooperation with the appropriate State agency, will have considerable effect in weeding out those schools that offer little or no training. Men who work at the trade and employers in the trade are far more qualified to judge the merits of a trade schood than an employee of a board of education or the Veterans' Administration, whose knowledge of Vocational education is usually superficial.