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Fighting for an Education
By Ray Kimball, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 30, 2008
When combat commander Ray Kimball came home from a tour of duty in Iraq in 2003, his adjustment to civilian life wasn’t easy. He had trouble connecting with his community, he writes in his first-person column in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and felt adrift in a world so different from wartime Iraq. Fortunately, he was selected for an Army-funded graduate program at a top university. “As I immersed myself in my studies, I found that I was better able to make sense of my combat experiences” and reconnect with the civilian world, Kimball writes.
But educational opportunities like his are far too rare, he argues. “Despite the promises of military recruiters that the military will pay for a college education, current GI Bill benefits cover only about 60 percent to 70 percent of the cost of a four-year degree at a public university—and less than half the cost of a private college,” he explains. For reservists and National Guard members, who may have served multiple tours, the education benefits are even less.
Today’s veterans desperately need the type of financial support for education that their grandfathers received with the World War II-era GI bill, which covered full tuition, book fees, and provided a living stipend, Kimball writes. The new GI bill proposed by Senator Jim Webb, himself a veteran, has broad support from both Democrats and Republicans, and is likely to pass both houses of Congress by veto-proof margins. Kimball argues that by covering the full cost of any public institution in a veteran’s state, the new GI bill will provide veterans with well-deserved educational opportunities, as well as ease their transitions from war to peace.
The full text of Kimball’s opinion piece is available on the Post-Gazette Web site.
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