Servicemen's Readjustment Act

Servicemen's Readjustment Act (1944). In 1944, during the height of World War II, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Servicemen's Readjustment Act, designed to enhance the future of the more than sixteen million men and women who served in the armed forces. The American Legion had drafted the legislation and lobbied for its passage, calling it “a bill of rights for G.I. Joe and G.I. Jane.” The “G.I. Bill of Rights,” or “G.I. Bill,” as it is commonly known, authorized payments for tuition, books, and living expenses for up to four years of college or vocational school, low‐interest mortgages for homeowners, loans for veterans to buy farms and start businesses, and a “readjustment allowance” of twenty dollars per week while veterans sought employment.

In important ways, the G.I. Bill shaped the economic and social history of postwar America. Over one million veterans enrolled in colleges in 1946—half of that year's total enrollment. By 1956, almost ten million men and women had benefited from the law's educational and training provisions. Colleges often made places for male veterans by turning away qualified women, however. Furthermore, almost four million veterans received Veterans Administration loans for houses, spurring the suburbanization process, the postwar baby boom, and record demand for goods and services. The importance of the G.I. Bill lies not only in its immediate economic and social impact, but also in the fact that its provisions were later extended to millions of veterans of other conflicts, including the Korean and Vietnam Wars.
See also Education: Collegiate Education; Education: The Rise of the University; Fifties, The; Housing; World War II: Domestic Effects.

Bibliography

Keith W. Olson , The G.I. Bill, the Veterans, and the Colleges, 1974.
Michael J. Bennett , When Dreams Came True: The GI Bill and the Making of Modern America, 1996.

William M. Tuttle Jr.