The Veterans Are Coming, the Veterans Are Coming

The new GI Bill, if the Veteran's Administration can ever figure out how to run it or outsource it in a way that actually makes it happen, figures to be a somewhat transformative factor in many campuses over the next 2 or 3 years, or longer. We're watching its implementation and the related issues closely and enjoyed the advice (mostly for administrators) in this piece from Inside Higher Ed by Edward F. Palm:

Finally, expect veterans to do well. Just as the expectation that someone will behave badly can create a self-fulfilling prophecy, greeting someone with the expectation that he or she will excel can achieve the desired result. That same undergraduate adviser who puzzled me with his patronizing comment about supporting the first G.I. Bill more than redeemed himself later by soliciting my comments in class when we were discussing a story set in a World War II training camp, Philip Roth’s “Defender of the Faith.” I was able to clarify some of the military practices and customs on which the story turns, and my professor stoked my self-confidence by telling the class that “he speaks from an interesting perspective; he was in the military himself.”