readily agree that military service during the cold war is not divorced from danger and personal risk.

But these are not the most compelling reasons for the bill, Mr. Chairman.

I am for the bill because I believe the program will help to build a stonger America.

I am for it because I am convinced, on the basis of our experience under the old GI bill, that it will more than pay its way in future tax revenues and benefits to our country. The additional skills and earning capacity of the men and women who trained under the GI bill are among our greatest national assets today.

Finally, I am for the bill because I believe it will improve the morale and spirit of the young men who serve in the Armed Forcesnot only as fighting men during their service, but as citizens in a peaceful world tomorrow.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. HALEY. Are there any questions?

If not, I thank you very much, Congressman Edmondson. We are glad to have you before the committee.

Mr. EDMONDSON. Thank you very much.

Mr. HALEY. The next witness is Mr. Robert G. Bernreuter, special assistant to president for student affairs, Pennsylvania State University.

We are glad to have you here this morning. I see that you have a prepared statement.

You may proceed.

STATEMENT OF ROBERT G. BERNREUTER, DEAN OF ADMISSIONS AND REGISTRAR, AND SPECIAL ASSISTANT FOR STUDENT AFFAIRS, THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY, UNIVERSITY PARK, PA.

Mr. BERNREUTER. Mr. Chairman, my name is Robert G. Bernreuter. I am the dean of admissions, registrar, and special assistant for student affairs at the Pennsylvania State University. My duties require me to evaluate the credentials and to predict the scholastic success of all undergraduate students, including veterans, who apply for admission at our university, to keep the records of their academic work, and to administer the programs for their counseling and their social and recreational activities. As a consequence, I am able to speak from firsthand knowledge concerning the success of the veterans who have been students at our university.

The veterans have done extremely well. Their scholastic records average higher than those of the nonveteran. Proportionately fewer of them have been dropped from the university for poor scholarship. They have also shown more tenacity, and fewer have dropped out of their own accord before graduation.

In addition to being good students, they have been good citizens. During this present year, only four veterans have been in serious disciplinary trouble with our dean of men's office. The other 1,440 have fine records, which is surprising in the light of all we hear about delinquency these days. Furthermore, we have found the veterans to show qualities of maturity and leadership all out of propor

tion to their numbers. One evidence of this is the extent to which the dean of men's office has chosen veterans to serve as counselors in our residence halls. At present only 10 percent of our students are veterans but 59 percent of those who have been chosen as residence hall counselors are veterans.

This evidence that the veterans are better students, better disciplined, and have greater qualities of leadership, supports the results of the studies we made last year and reported at the hearings of Senate bill 1138 before the Senate Subcommittee on Veterans' Affairs.

My attitude toward the veteran as a fine student is shared by the faculty of the university. Whenever a student is dropped for poor scholarship, he can be reinstated only upon action of a faculty committee. This committee is quite strict and will reinstate a student only when it has good evidence that the boy is prepared to do well. Their attitude toward veterans is illustrated by an incident that happened at the beginning of this semester. A boy who was dropped for poor scholarship 2 years ago and who had been in the Air Force, on duty in Alaska, applied for reinstatement. Originally he had done very poor work in a nonscientific course. During his military experience he became interested in electronics. He did well in the service schools. He applied for readmission into electrical engineering, one of our very hardest fields. In considering his case, the committee took into account the immaturity he showed as a freshman, the good record he made in the service schools, and the fine record he made in his military service generally. They were impressed with the tremendous development in his maturity and the seriousness with which he was now approaching his college work. He was reinstated this semester and is doing well. This is illustrative of hundreds of undergraduate cases which this committee has handled.

My own experience, the experience of our dean of men, and the experience of our faculty committee, all combine to show that the veteran on our campus has been a very desirable student. We would like to have a continuing flow coming to us from the various branches of the armed services.

Following World War II and the Korean war, a great many young men found it possible to attend college because of the GI benefits. The provisions of the Korean war bill benefited not only the veterans but also benefited the economy of Pennsylvania. I can illustrate this by describing what took place in one of our depressed industrial areas in Pennsylvania. It became a regular pattern for a bright high school student to go into the military service immediately after graduation from high school. He was then able to attend college because of the educational benefits. Many such students enrolled in the 2-year engineering program at one of the campuses which our university maintains in that part of the State. Upon completion of this 2-year college program, they found many job opportunities open to them in engineering. This pattern of high school graduation, then military service, then a college program, developed a reservoir of educated manpower in this depressed industrial area.

Since the educational benefits for veterans have terminated, this whole pattern of behavior has changed. Students of this sort are simply not finding it possible to attend college. This is a great loss to themselves and to the industrial area in which they live. It is because

we hope that this pattern of behavior can be reinstated that we are anxious to have the educational benefits again provided for veterans.

We had hoped that the national defense loan program would serve as a substitute for veterans' benefits. As yet, it has not done so. It has, of course, helped a great many students but it does not help the kind of boy I am talking about. When a boy's father has had to struggle hard all of his life on a small salary to keep a family going, there develops a great fear of debt. It is absolutely useless to tell such a boy that he should borrow from $1,000 to $5,000 in order to finance an education. All that the family has learned about prudence argues against incurring such a debt. The consequence is that the boy leaves high school and finds whatever job is available and gives up all thoughts of higher education.

As we look toward the immediate future in higher education, we see a tremendous increase in the number of students. We do not need to do anything to get enough students to fill our classrooms. At Penn State we will be forced to increase in the next 10 years from approximately 20,000 students to approximately 35,000 students in order to take care of the natural increase in the number of collegeage students. Consequently, I want to make it very clear that I do not advocate the extension of educational benefits for veterans in order to get more students into our university.

Our real need is for students who are prepared to benefit from their college years. As I have said, we find that the veteran is better prepared than the nonveteran to take advantage of his college opportunities. We hope that the veterans' benefits will be reestablished and that more students who could not otherwise attend college will come. We hope that they will bring with them the same increased level of maturity, seriousness of purpose, and selfdiscipline that has characterized those students who have obtained educational benefits in the past.

Anything that the Congress of the United States can do to increase the number of veterans in our universities will be of real benefit to the students, to the universities, and to the country.

I wish to express the appreciation of the Pennsylvania State University for this opportunity to present these views to the House of Representatives Committee on Veterans' Affairs.

Mr. HALEY. Are there any questions?

Mr. Flynn?

Mr. FLYNN. Yes. I appreciate very much your giving this information to the committee.

Prior to your coming here, a few days ago some of the representatives of the Department of Defense appeared and opposed the extension of the GI bill of rights educational benefits to the peacetime soldier.

If I recall their testimony correctly it was to the effect that there are about 100,000 new boys being taken into service, mostly through enlistment, each year. Their past record disclosed that approximately 45 percent of the boys that left service, in I believe 1958, or at least the last year the benefits were there, did so giving as their reason that they wanted to take advantage of the education opportunities under the GI bill.

They testified further that these boys had had from 9 to, I believe, 26 weeks of training, mostly technical in nature, and that he believed

that the education opportunities afforded by this bill would seriously injure the armed services in that this 45 percent of the enlistees leaving to take advantage of the educational benefits would of necessity need to be retrained by the military, although he did admit there was an ample reservoir of replacement material available of equal caliber.

Could you comment on these remarks by the Department of Defense?

Mr. BERNREUTER. I believe that points out exactly what I am talking about. The veteran who is interested in education is a very fine person. The Army would like to keep him; the universities would like to have him. This is a two-way compliment to the veteran. I do not know the troubles that they have in keeping their man. I myself have had nearly 4 years of active military duty.

I do know that they are in a position to control to a very considerable extent the time at which they release a boy for educational privileges. If it is interfering with their program it would be perfectly all right for the universities to have released from military a young man, who wants to go to college, delayed until he has completely fulfilled all of his military obligations. We would like him to come to college, if he is intellectually able to profit, when he has completed his military obligation.

Mr. FLYNN. Do you believe a boy who has filled his complete military obligations, who is then confronted with the possibility of reenlisting or attending college and securing an education, should, if he desires to go to college, have that opportunity.

Mr. BERNREUTER. Yes, sir. I believe every young man should be trained to develop his talents to the fullest, either within or outside the military. I cannot believe that a college-trained man who is serving his country outside the military is of less value to the Nation than an untrained boy who is serving in the military.

Mr. FLYNN. And do you believe that that boy, if he is given the opportunity to attend a college, will become for the most part a superior student in comparison with the boy who is not put in military service?

Mr. BERNREUTER. I believe he will, sir. We have a great deal of evidence that a boy will do better after his military service, in college, than he would have done had he gone directly into college from high school.

Mr. FLYNN. And therefore upon graduation will probably have more to contribute to society as a whole.

Mr. BERNREUTER. I believe this very firmly, sir.

Mr. FLYNN. Do you have any trouble with the boy who gets his first degree, and wants to go on to one of the professional schools, but has reached the age where he must enlist, 22 or 23 years of age; do you have any trouble with these boys putting in their stint in service and then getting out with family obligations and finding it impossible to go on to become the engineer or the dentist or the doctor or lawyer that they might otherwise have become without the GI bill?

Mr. BERNREUTER. No, sir, I don't see that that has presented any serious problem. If a boy is able to graduate from college and wants to do advanced graduate work, but has to take time out for his military service, almost always he can find that the university will find a job

for him to help him support himself when he eventually gets out of the military and gets back to the university.

The universities are seeking graduates who wish to go on for advanced degrees, and are able to support a very large proportion of them.

Mr. FLYNN. Is that true even if they have family obligations with children?

Mr. BERNREUTER. Yes, sir. We have several hundred graduate students now who are doing exactly this at our institution.

Mr. FLYNN. In telling us about the superior quality of the student with military service, you are doing this after having spent a number of years as special assistant for student affairs and as dean of admissions at Pennsylvania State Universary?

Mr. BERNREUTER. That is right, sir.

Mr. FLYNN. You have been in a position to observe and notice this at first hand?

Mr. BERNREUTER. Yes, sir.

Mr. FLYNN. Thank you very much.

Mr. HALEY. Mr. Fino?

Mr. FINO. No questions.

Mr. HALEY. Mr. George?

Mr. GEORGE. I enjoyed your statement very much, Mr. Bernreuter. I am wondering if the military is consistent.

The gentlemen from Wisconsin, Mr. Flynn, mentioned that we have had quite a bit of testimony from the Pentagon and other sources from within the administration opposing this bill. So often they will leave the impression or make the statement that it interferes with the regular training in the Army.

Wouldn't you think that if it is necessary to keep a man in service for say 4 years or longer that they would ask Congress to pass such a law? Mr. BERNREUTER. It would seem reasonable to me, sir, for them to do SO. I again state, we have no interest in shortening the military service of any young man. We would simply like to arrange it for him to find it possible to come to the university when his military service is completed.

Mr. GEORGE. You find that the best students are those who have in the past been GI's and then have the opportunity to go to school? Mr. BERNREUTER. That is right, sir.

Mr. GEORGE. Thank you.

Mr. HALEY. The gentleman from New York, Mr. Halpern.

Mr. HALPERN. No questions.

Mr. HALEY. Mr. Slack?

Mr. SLACK. No questions.

Mr. HALEY. Let me address a question to you.

In citing this particular case on page 2 of your testimony, when you say "originally he had done very poor work in nonscientific courses" and then you state that during his military career he became interested in electronics, does that indicate to you that probably we need a little more guidance for these youngsters, to help them find a proper place, a proper study in which they should engage?

Mr. BERNREUTER. Yes, sir, it shows that very clearly. I can elaborate upon that a bit, sir.