The Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act of 2008 or “New G.I. Bill” was passed into law and will be available in August of next year. It provides 100 percent tuition paid to a public in-state university, $1000 for books and supplies, as well as a monthly payment for housing that is comparable to the local area’s cost of living. If you’re a veteran who has served your time and came home to this messed-up economy, then this bill is great, but if you are a kid who wants to go to college and sees this as your only ticket to get there, that’s a problem.

Many people, even if they are against the war, can agree that the government should take care of the veterans that have had to fight it. No one wants to see our young people used and then forgotten. Many others of us don’t want to see our young people used at all.

“The G.I. Bill is the military’s single most effective recruitment tool; the number one reason civilians join the military is to get money for college,” according to Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), an organization that supported the bill.

We are in an economic climate where financial aid avenues for middle- and low-income families are drying up. Guilford’s partnership with Wachovia for student loans is just one example of the uncertainty we face when looking for tuition assistance.

The concern I have is for the young people who are trying to find a place for themselves in this country, whose parents either didn’t make the kind of income it takes to pay for a four-year college or simply don’t find school necessary for their children. Those are the young people that are looking to the government for help with tuition, books, and living expenses. They are not likely to find a deal as good as the one the new G.I. Bill is offering.

The prospect of leaving college debt-free is a really good one, but why should you have to be put in a foreign country with a gun in your hand to get it?

It isn’t right that our system should favor war over education, so much that we would funnel our tuition assistance through our war machine as a bribe to get you to sign-up to let people shoot at you. Risking your life and sanity is a mighty stiff price to pay for a college degree.

So why is our government proposing budgets that look like this? The 2009 fiscal year’s budget that was just released by the White House has $97.2 billion dollars of financial assistance for college students but $575 billion for military defense, and that doesn’t include the figures for this new act.

Even when we say tuition is the focus and that education is important we package it in an act that clearly states otherwise, by giving the lion’s share of the funds to the war effort.

“A $162 billion war funding act that includes a $63 billion overhaul of GI Bill education benefits,” is what Rick Maze of the Army Times reported being signed by Bush. Does that sound like an Educational Assistance Act to you?

Do the math and you see that the veterans only get 38 percent of the act’s funds for their service. Mental note: if you are going to get a war act passed, it’s a great political move to label it and package it with education. A better name for the act would have been the Pentagon Bail-Out Plan instead of the Veterans Educational Assistance Act because the money will be used to stop the cash-flow crisis that has postponed nonessential training and travel by Pentagon employees and threatened their payroll.

“We must put together the right formula that will demonstrate our respect for those who have stepped forward to serve in these difficult times,” said Sen. Jim Webb to The New York Times. “First-class service to country deserves first-class appreciation.”

With that I agree, but how do we keep that same appreciation from catching others in an economic draft. How can we ensure that the people who join the military are doing it for the right reasons? That is the problem we need to solve next.