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In the world of certainty described in Ch. 2, people finance their education by borrowing in perfect capital markets against their future income, and such voluntary choices are efficient. Once risk, uncertainty, and imperfect information enter the picture, that result no longer holds, requiring state intervention to give people a mechanism for moving resources to their younger years. This chapter and the next point to these problems as they apply to four sets of actors – policy‐makers, consumers of education, borrowers, and lenders. This chapter discusses the complex objectives of education and then explains why it is not possible to quantify the benefits of education, with two implications: policy‐makers cannot measure external benefits and hence the efficient level of subsidy; nor is it possible to quantify definitively the efficient level of spending on education.

This chapter investigates a set of “direct” benefits to education. Education provides an interesting and potentially enjoyable experience for students; it educates people as citizens and voters; it generates higher tax payments; it even reduces crime. And it provides for the individuals concerned a personal resource, interesting work, and additional capacity for enjoyment throughout their life. The measure of education the chapter uses in the British Cohort Study (BCS) is qualifications. The BCS tell us the highest qualifications that a person has achieved. There are altogether five levels of qualifications, but the chapter creates a single continuous variable, thus creating an index of qualifications for the BCS. In the household panel studies, the chapter measures education more simply by years of full-time education and confine the analyses to people under 65.

This chapter examines some of the consequences of the political wrangling in Washington on the Vietnam veterans' educational opportunities. Soon after the passage of the Veterans' Readjustment Benefits Act, both Congress and President Lyndon B. Johnson's administration examined the option of increasing the education benefits for Vietnam veterans. In September 1966, Johnson created a special task force by executive order to examine veterans' benefits. He also proposed the Vietnam Conflict Servicemen and Veterans' Act of 1967 and reversed his earlier plans to downsize the Veterans Administration. This chapter discusses the difficulties encountered by many of the first veterans of the Vietnam War as they returned home to use their education benefits.

This chapter focuses on the conclusion of the Vietnam-era G.I. Bill saga, highlighted by the clash between Congress and President Gerald Ford over a proposed increase in Vietnam War veterans' education benefits. Throughout his brief term as president, Ford surpassed Richard Nixon's attempts to bring a culture of economic sacrifice to government spending. As a former member of the House Appropriations Committee, Ford demonstrated a strong interest in and knowledge of economics. Three days after taking office, he identified inflation as “public enemy number one.” This chapter examines Ford's attempt to kill a G.I. Bill that passed both the Senate and the House by vetoing an increase in veterans' education benefits and how that veto was overridden by Congress. It concludes with a discussion of the final rounds of debates over funding levels at the end of the 1970s, along with the continued influence of Olin Teague on limiting the benefits offered to Vietnam veterans.

This book explores the contentious political debates over the Vietnam-era G.I. Bills and their impact on Vietnam War veterans' education benefits. It discusses the legislative history behind the Vietnam-era G.I. Bills, starting with the 1944 G.I. Bill of Rights, or Servicemen's Readjustment Act, as well as the main politicians involved in their passage in order to understand how legislation that failed to fulfill many of the needs of Vietnam veterans came into being. It argues that a combination of political challenges resulted in education benefits for Vietnam-era veterans that were inferior to those received by their World War II counterparts. The book focuses on the two dominant strains of postwar American political ideology, liberalism and conservatism, and their implications for veterans' benefits. It also examines the postwar debates on federal compensation for military service that led to a reevaluation of the meaning of citizenship in America during the Cold War era.

This book concludes with an assessment of the impact of education benefits on Vietnam War veterans' educational attainment as well as their life earnings. It cites statistics concerning the number of eligible veterans who claimed their education benefits, their educational attainment, and earnings. It also considers some of the problems that continued to compromise the benefits program's effectiveness right up until its demise, including the restrictions experienced by Vietnam veterans on the education they could attain and the quality of education offered under the G.I. Bills. Finally, it highlights veterans' belief that the “chance for learning” mentioned by Tim O'Brien at the Vietnam Veterans Day in Washington, DC in March 1974 never materialized, suggesting that the G.I. Bill was a failure for the Vietnam generation.