![]() ![]() How did access to college become part of the benefits received by veterans?īUNCH: Well, the GI Bill, which is such a landmark achievement, because it's really the first time that we experimented with making college a public good. The GI Bill gave certain benefits to returning World War II veterans. GROSS: In writing about how college became part of the American dream, you go back to the GI Bill of 1944. This idea of going up another step up the ladder, for so many families, so many middle-class families like mine, I think the idea is more clinging to the ladder, you know, and not falling backwards, you know, as college gets more expensive and more competitive. But by the time they came of age in the 2010s, really the whole college environment had changed. And I kind of assumed the same path for my kids. I did actually end up going to Brown University. So I was really focused on trying to get into an Ivy League school. ![]() My dad got a full scholarship to go to Trinity College in Connecticut, so we took a big leap up the ladder.Īnd when I was growing up, I wanted to not just go to college, but I wanted to go to the best college possible. There was just this innate sense that the path of life was to do better than the generation that came before you, right? So my grandmother, I think who always regretted never having the opportunity to go to college herself, even as she was, you know, recruiting kids and building this college in Peoria, you know, really pushed her kids to go to college. What did it mean to you? What did college mean to you?īUNCH: In the 20th century, college really became the American dream. Your father - you know, your grandmother's son - went to college. GROSS: So your grandmother started a small college that was a secretarial college and then a business school. As they struggled to make ends meet, he wondered how he'd ever be able to afford sending his children to a good college, especially during the two years when they'd both be in college. The roots of his new book go back about 15 years when he was a reporter at the Philadelphia Daily News and his two children were in grade and middle school. How do we go from the 1944 GI Bill, which offered World War II veterans - or at least white ones - easy access to college, to now the stress of today of trying to get into the right college? And how did colleges and universities become a target of the right? My guest, Will Bunch, addresses these and other related questions in his new book, "After The Ivory Tower Falls: How College Broke The American Dream And Blew Up Our Politics - And How To Fix It."īunch is a national columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer, focusing on social injustice, income inequality, politics and government. How did college go from being the doorway to the American dream to the nightmare of starting adult life deep in debt, unsure of whether your degree will help you get a job that even pays enough to pay off that debt.
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