Earl Hadley is education coordinator for the Campaign for America's Future .
The Bush administration recently pressed Newsweek to help promote the image of the American military internationally after the magazine retracted a story suggesting that U.S. interrogators were desecrating the Holy Quran. But it’s not only abroad that America’s military needs an effective public relations makeover; domestically the military is facing declining enrollment numbers. As recruiting numbers drop, it is evident that more and more young Americans are hesitant to sign up for a stint in the armed forces. But for those who believe in a well-stocked military, have no worries—the administration that paid for pundits to advocate Bush policies and produced fake new stories touting the government line is well prepared for military recruiting problems.
Buried away in the No Child Left Behind Act, which became the nation’s main education law in 2002, is a clause requiring high schools to provide military recruiters with the name and contact information of students and allow them access to students in schools. To be fair to the Bush administration, schools can always choose to reject the federal dollars aimed at helping struggling students to avoid passing on private information to the military. Similarly, school districts have to inform parents that they can opt their students out of the “recruiting database.” So kids in private and high-achieving schools not accepting federal dollars don’t have to deal with the issue. Similarly, students with active and involved parents can also avoid unwanted visits from soldiers. In the end, it will be low-income students and those with parents working multiple jobs who will receive the most calls to “be all you can be.”
The military has always drawn heavily from the poor, who, in many cases, have few other options for career development than to pick up a gun and hope for the best. We’ve all seen the ads: “Do more before nine a.m. than most people do all day, see the world, become a doctor, learn to be a pilot”…the promises of the military go on and on. And the commercials are effective—a recent survey found that “money for college” was the main explanation given for enlisting in the military. Given the role of the GI Bill in building the middle class after World War II, these ads have history, in addition to sleek production, behind them. The tragedy—or crime, depending on how you look at the situation—is that the military can no longer deliver on its promises.
The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that the GI Bill currently only covers 60 percent of the costs at a public four-year school, while the GI Bill originally covered all education costs. Similarly, the GI Bill hasn’t provided subsidies for veterans with spouses and children since 1977.
Records aren’t kept on how many veterans achieve a degree, but from 1985 to 1994 only eight percent of eligible veterans—those are people who contributed financially to participate in the program—used up their entire tuition assistance allowance. Some veterans may end their education with a two-year degree or certificate, and others may decide to raise a family—but clearly, the college degree at the end of the rainbow is not all that easy to achieve. In making this point, some veterans point to the byzantine bureaucracy they’re forced to navigate to attain benefits, while others simply say that there is not enough money provided to pay for college.
But, in a manner that should please good progressives everywhere, there’s growing unrest from the local level to the U.S. Congress about military recruiters in schools and their broken promises. Earlier this month, in Seattle, Garfield High School’s Parent Teacher Student Association adopted a resolution stating that military recruiters do not belong in public schools. There’s also a non-profit called Military Free Zone, which encourages students to have their parents submit an opt-out form telling schools to withhold their information from recruiters. The Army itself has said it will make special efforts to remind recruiters to act ethically. And some in Congress have called for increasing the level of GI Bill benefits so veterans can actually afford college.
While these are all important actions, what this country most urgently needs are leaders who will reject the notion that it’s acceptable for poor students to have to serve in the military to get a college education. In Washington, we have the opposite; we have Republicans legislators tying money for poor schools to military recruitment. We have a president who broke his word on increasing the maximum Pell Grant—the main federal financial aid program for working-class families—by a thousand dollars to $5,100, and has shortchanged other forms of financial aid.
In his most recent budget, Bush proposes to increase the maximum Pell Grant to $4,100—not even keeping up with rising college costs—while cutting funding for low-interest loans and college prep programs for the poor. Bush has also tried to gut vocational education funding for the past few years, and in his most recent budget called for killing vocational education funding entirely. Whether it’s a college degree or a technical skill set, low-income Americans shouldn’t have to risk their lives to get an education.
