Supporting the Troops ...or, Sustaining a Warrior-class?

This from the Boston Globe:

GI Bill falling short of college tuition costs
Pentagon resists boost in benefits

WASHINGTON - Halsey Bernard made it through a tour in Iraq as a machine gunner. The question for him now is will he make it through the University of Massachusetts.

It isn't a question of academics for the 24-year-old Boston resident.

It's about money - and about the obligation of a nation to its fighting men and women. Bernard, who served with the Second Battalion Eighth Marines in Nasariyah, Iraq, in 2003, is one of thousands of veterans who have returned from combat service only to find that their GI Bill college benefits fall far short of actual costs.

"What they tell you on TV and what the recruiters tell you when you go to sign up is: 'Don't worry. College is taken care of.' And it is not true," said Bernard. "Today it is a serious financial struggle and bureaucratic struggle and personal struggle to try to go to college after serving in combat."

The original GI Bill provided full tuition, housing, and living costs for some 8 million veterans; for many, it was the engine of opportunity in the postwar years. But, in the mid 1980s, the program was scaled back to a peacetime program that pays a flat sum. Today the most a veteran can receive is approximately $9,600 a year for four years - no matter what college costs.

Now, five years into the Iraq conflict, a movement is gathering steam in Washington to boost the payout of the GI Bill, to provide a true war-time benefit for war- time service. But the effort has run headlong into another reality of an unpopular war: the struggle to sustain an all-volunteer force.

The Pentagon and White House have so far resisted a new GI Bill out of fear that too many will use it - choosing to shed the uniform in favor of school and civilian life.

"The incentive to serve and leave," said Robert Clarke, assistant director of accessions policy at the Department of Defense, may "outweigh the incentive to have them stay." ...

...That promise of an education in return for serving the country is one of the most frequently cited reasons that young men and women join the military, and it is plastered all over recruitment banners and television advertisements.

The limited return on the promise is one of the most common sources of bitterness and frustration that emerge in interviews with Iraq and Afghanistan veterans...

...Whatever compromise emerges in Washington - if any does - it will do little for veterans like Todd Bowers, 28, who dreamed of attending an elite private college after returning, after being shot in the face, from his second combat tour...

..."You end up feeling that the military thinks that all you deserve is a community college. It's pretty disgraceful. I think I can do better, and I think anyone who served the country in combat deserves better," he said.