ties, amounted to more than 3,000,000 student years. This estimate of deficiency is a conservative one, and we may say with certainty that we are now at least that far behind the normal training of our Nation's leaders in colleges and universities. In addition, there has been a sharp reduction in the number of high-school graduates during these years, so that at the end of the war there are not as many students prepared to enter college from the high schools as would normally have been expected.

Simply to offset this educational deficiency it would be necessary for the colleges and universities of the Nation to enroll 750,000 extra students for full 4 years of training. These extra 750,000 students would have to be over and above the normal enrollment that would have been expected in the colleges and universities during the next few

years.'

Therefore, in making provision to encourage veterans to continue their education, the Congress is taking a long step to help offset the very great educational deficiency caused by the war.

Our opinion, based on our experience is that, even with the greatest possible encouragement that Congress can give to veterans, there will not be anything like enough of them renew their education to make up for this vast educational deficiency. On the basis of a survey conducted in the armed forces, General Hines last January estimated that there might be as many as 660,000 veterans in the colleges and universities of the country. These veterans cannot be expected to average four full years of college study. The Nation will be fortunate, indeed, if the total number of student-years completed by veterans in colleges and universities should total a million and a half, which is only half enough to offset the estimated deficiency at that level.

While no data are available for high schools, based on as accurate a survey, the probabilities are that our deficiency in student years based on high-school years would run toward 10,000,000.

Already into the colleges and universities of the Nation there is pouring a growing stream of veterans. On this date, October 11, I would estimate the number to be approaching 50,000 enrolled, with a great increase to be expected later in the year as the winter and spring quarters and second semesters begin. Many universities are providing for veterans to enter at more frequent intervals. The number may well go beyond 100,000 in the colleges before the end of the year.

In that connection I also point out that a survey has just been completed, indicating in the public schools there were 5,000 to 10,000 of these veterans, and that number is also increasing and is considered certain to be increased to 25,000 this year.

Everywhere the story is the same regarding these veterans. They are making their adjustment well and quickly to campus life and college study. The number is large enough and the experience sufficiently similar throughout the country to dispel any fear as to the veteran's effective adjustment to college life. To be sure, veterans are more mature, they are more serious-minded, as a whole they are more vocation-minded in selecting their courses, and many require a brief orientation period to become adjusted, but on the whole they are falling with ease and wholesomeness into the stride of university life. There are individual exceptions, of course, just as there are nonveteran students who do not make the adjustment. But the picture as a whole

is very good so far as the adjustment of the individual veteran to college life is concerned.

Some measure of the interest of veterans in education may be had from the fact that in August of this year more than 1,000,000 men in uniform were enrolled in the various educational programs of the United States Armed Forces Institute while awaiting discharge, with 175,000 enrollees in the European and Mediterranean area alone.

The colleges and universities have made many adjustments to provide opportunities for veterans. In their admission requirements, courses, guidance services, and organization nearly all higher-education institutions have arranged their programs to encourage veterans who are capable of doing college work.

Many public-school systems throughout the country are extending their programs of adult and vocational education to meet the needs of veterans.

There are several major obstacles standing in the way of these veterans, however-obstacles so serious as to defeat in large measure the effectiveness of Public Law 346. It is only natural that actual experience would indicate the need for amending such an important piece of new legislation.

The major obstacles to veterans' education now are:

(1) Insufficient subsistence allowances to veterans.

(2) Lack of housing facilities, particularly at colleges and universities.

(3) Inadequate compensation to institutions, especially public colleges and universities and public-school systems.

(4) The deduction clause under which the entire cost is charged against any future benefits to the veteran.

(5) Inadequacy of counseling.

There are other important ways in which the provisions for education under Public Law 346 can be improved and strengthened, but the chief needs are related to the five obstacles listed. We are convinced that removal of these hindrances would result in the encouragement of veterans to secure education, whereas the situation is one of discouragement to tens of thousands-ultimately hundreds of thousands of veterans as long as these obstacles persist.

The measures now before your committee are intended to reduce some of these obstacles and open the way for more adequate educational opportunities for veterans. I should like to discuss some of these amendments in relation to the major obstacles I have mentioned.

Now, we come to part I: Reducing the major obstacles. First, there is the need for more adequate subsistence allowances. This refers specifically to title II, part VIII, paragraph 6, Servicemen's Readjustment Act.

1

Public Law 346 provides $50 per month subsistence allowance for a veteran without dependents, and $75 per month for a veteran with one or more dependents.

One reason I have treated this so extensively in preparing my statement is that in the portion of the hearings I have been privileged to hear, not so much emphasis has been placed on this as I thought might be the case, by other organizations, and I think most of them would be of one point of view. I think the evidence for increasing allowances should be in the record in order that it may be considered.

This allowance has already proved to be entirely too small, and its inadequacy will be recognized more and more as veterans now entering school find out by experience how far it falls short of providing even minimum subsistence. Quite commonly veterans begin their education thinking that they can make out on the allowance and in 2 or 3 months many of them fall hopelessly behind financially.

Under H. R. 3749, which passed the House, the allowances would be raised to $60 and $85 per month for veterans without and with dependents, respectively. Under S. 1176 the allowance would remain at $50 per month for the veteran without dependents and $75 for the veteran with one dependent, but $25 more per month would be allowed for each additional dependent up to a total of $150 per month.

Subsistence, if it means anything, must include room and board, clothes, and absolutely necessary incidentals such as carfare and laundry charges. It has already been brought out at these hearings that cost of board and room alone averages $46 per month for the single veteran who is lucky enough to get into a college dormitory. For the single veteran the average is $66 for room and board off the campus. These figures are averages for representative universities, and the cost at half of them is above these figures. But, no veteran can subsist on board and room alone. He must wear clothes as other people do, must pay laundry charges, carfare, and pay other absolutely unavoidable expenses.

The truth is that a bare minimum for subsistence would average at least $80 per month for the veteran without dependents and from $10 to $25 per month additional for each dependent. I do not mean to imply that this sum is adequate to live on satisfactorily; it is sufficient only to cover the barest necessities.

There is abundant evidence bearing on this point.

From all over the country, without excepting any region, we have authentic reports from responsible educational officials, gathered by the Research Division of the National Education Association, expressing the opinion that the actual cost of subsistence of single veterans in school this fall is averaging more than $80 per month. The figures vary more in accordance with the size of the community than they do in relation to the size of the school or college. The following are the medians reported for different-sized communities:

Those are the amounts they are called upon to pay for a subsistence level of living as they go to school.

The allowances for disabled veterans are much higher, possibly because it is considered that they may need more, but I suspect largely because we have had more experience with disabled veterans and have become aware of the necessity of more adequate allowances.

Fifty dollars per month would be $600 per year while $75 per month totals $900 per year.

Is it possible to live on such amounts? In 1937 a group of specialists in helping to establish a minimum-wage law for the District of Columbia concluded that a woman Government worker living alone needed to have $1,092 annually to cover necessary expenses for maintenance and protection of health. By September 1942 the Women's Bureau of the Department of Labor estimated that this minimum budget should total $1,684; in January 1943, to cover the rising cost of living and high taxes, the minimum budget was estimated at $1,830 annually. By June of 1945 this minimum budget of $1,830 would have needed to be at least $1,982 in order to have maintained a constant purchasing power.

It should be noted then that the estimated minimum budget for a woman Government worker living alone is at least three times the subsistence allowance for a single person under Public Law 346.

A subsistence allowance of $50 a month would amount to an allowance of $11.69 a week, which is $5.30 less than the average weekly benefit for unemployment paid in the various States during the first half of 1945. Certainly the subsistence needs of the ex-GI and his family will be no less than that of other groups of workers.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has issued a study of the spending and saving of the families of the Nation in the year 1941. The average money income of all of the families was shown to be $1,481. It was generally recognized that such an income was grossly inadequate for most families. Utilizing statistics of the Bureau of Human Nutrition and Home Economics of the Department of Agriculture it was estimated that a family of four persons needed $2,100 a year in 1941 in order to live "in modest comfort and with an adequate diet."

If we translate $2,100 needed in 1941 to 1945, the amount would be $2,583. In terms of an adequate food allowance for a family, the subsistence allowance to a veteran with a family is just about one-third of what it should be.

There are those who will say that the veteran should work part time or secure a scholarship or otherwise supplement his allowance. But, it should be remembered that these boys feel that they have already lost several good years from their lives, and they want to carry educational programs up to the limit of their time available. To do odd jobs about the campus or the town for 50 cents an hour takes too much precious time from the veteran's delayed education.

It could be argued that the veterans are healthy and strong, anyway, and their families can stand cheap food and inadequate diet. It might be said also that most veterans are young and that their families might live in tents or trailers while they go to school. These arguments would have no appeal to this committee, I am sure, and they certainly are not likely to appeal to the veteran.

Under the present allowances, the veteran can do one of three things and this is what they are doing-(1) he can supplement his allowance from some other source; or (2) he can reduce his family to a level of living far below decent subsistence; or (3) he can decide to let his education go rather than impose such conditions upon his family. There is not the slightest doubt that thousands of veterans have chosen the last alternative and left off their education. Thousands of others who start training will, in my opinion, quit in despair when they see their families suffering, as they are bound to do.

The present situation is very acute for married men with families; 20 to 25 percent of the veterans in the universities this fall are married and want to live with their wives. In some colleges almost half the veterans enrolled are married, and the proportion seems to be increasing-strangely enough-as demobilization goes forward. That is, the proportion of veterans who are married, who are going to the universities, seems to be greater instead of less.

The $60 and $85 amounts proposed under H. R. 3749 are still entirely inadequate. We urge $80 for the veteran. $20 for the first dependent and $10 for each additional dependent as the absolute minimum if you want to meet actual subsistence costs.

You need have no fear whatever that the average veteran in school will have any money left over for movies or luxuries out of allowances. in the amounts suggested.

The second obstacle is housing facilities. There is an acute lack of housing facilities all over the Nation, of course. But it is much more acute at colleges and universities where married veterans want to go to school.

Many of the veterans who are married want to bring their families with them and they should be permitted to have them. The only way this bill or any of these bills would bear upon that obstacle would be in the raising of the subsistence allowance, perhaps making special provision where housing facilities are not available at low cost.

The committee might find some means of helping solve that problem.

We know the committee is sympathetic to the needs of the veterans and we want to call attention to the condition that has developed as one of the most serious obstacles they face.

A third obstacle is in relation to compensation to institutions, and we endorse very strongly the provisions of H. R. 3627 a bill not now before your committee, but it was prepared in cooperation with the Veterans' Administration to indicate some of the things they thought should be done, and S. 974 introduced in the Senate by the chairman of this subcommittee.

We heartily endorse the provisions of H. R. 3627 and of S. 974, amending paragraph 5 so that

no amount in excess of the customary fees shall be charged to the veteran under the provisions of section 1505, Public Law 346.

Publicly supported institutions and school systems charge no tuition or only a nominal tuition. By establishing minimum payments-$15 per month, $45 per quarter, $60 per semester-by permitting the charging of nonresident tuition for the education of veterans from within the State, and by providing under contract the payment of cost of instruction, the Veterans' Administrator has made it possible for public institutions to receive some compensation, though small, from the Federal Government to help defray the expense of educating veterans.

Some institutions by law cannot accept the money the Veterans' Administration is ready to give them. Those which charge nonresident fees for in-State veterans would be discriminating against their own veterans if the money is to be deducted from a future bonus.

That question has been a subject of a great deal of agitation in the States of Ohio, North Carolina, and Washington, and other places, but it has been particularly a problem in those States.