OF A GOLDEN AGE

In an outrageously prudent (and somewhat sly) move, Ohio’s state government gives all G.I. bill veterans in-state tuition at Ohio’s public universities. Ohio is the seventh-most populous state and has 13 public universities with an additional 24 regional campuses throughout the state. With nearly 500,000 public-university students enrolled at press time, Ohio seeks to swell that number to 700,000 or more. The state’s dilemma, the article explains, is that college students attend in Ohio and leave for other places.

Ohio has a notoriously strong private liberal-arts sector, but for perspective, the total enrollment of the state’s 55 private campuses is about 135,000. (Oberlin College is one of the top liberal-arts colleges in the country and has fewer than 3,000 students.) Private universities do not differentiate in-state and out-of-state tuitions because they have far fewer tax dollars in the mix. My alma mater, Beloit College, drew three-fourths of its roughly 1,300 students from outside Wisconsin, and highly selective schools like Oberlin or Grinnell College in Iowa draw even higher ratios.

According to the state of Ohio’s website: “Ohio is Committed to Ensuring that Our Nation’s Veterans and Their Families Receive the Services and Support that They Deserve. Ohioans recognize and celebrate the sacrifices that all veterans have made in serving this country. We believe that these veterans and their families should have the greatest possible access to the benefits that they have earned and Ohio is eager to do its part in honoring veterans’ dedication to their country.”

I say sly because Ohio is being patriotic and fiscally responsible in one fell swoop. President Bush recently signed a huge increase in the G.I. bill and for the state of Ohio that means enrolling any number of guaranteed paid-tuition students. The money never passes through the hands of veteran students; it’s merely funneled from federal to state government, with no opportunity to default on loans or spend beyond means.

In a time when our homecoming veterans are struggling to find support for alcoholism and other drug dependencies, I wonder how the combination of civilian life and college life will play out. In that article, the reporter makes a really compelling point: today’s U.S. military is much more strict about the troops’, uh, recreational habits. To some extent I understand that when a man is military age but not legal drinking age, it forces the military’s hand. At the same time, as the men of M*A*S*H 4077 taught us, the hardest jobs require the hardest unwinding.

Many universities, especially public ones that are scrutinized and bureaucratized*, crack down on drinking and force students into hourlong dorm-room binge sessions. This is, of course, dangerous and counterintuitive. Welcome to public policy.

* As a side note: Firefox’s spellchecker recognized “bureaucratized” but not “military’s.” Those pesky possessives.

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