Military educational benefits shouldn't expire

I said that I wasn't going to let the little stuff get to me. Such as the other day before the beginning of one of my classes there was a discussion with fellow classmates about the Montgomery GI Bill. This was before my Economics class and I can't recall what actually brought the subject up.

During the conversation I stated that I didn't feel that there should be an expiration date on the GI Bill. As it is, or at least was, is that the GI Bill expired ten years after a soldier's last date of military service. Which for me expired in 2001. Then a guy in the back of the room made a remark that totally shocked me. He stated that "if you haven't used it in ten years then you probably would never use it." So he felt that if after the first ten years you didn't use it then chances are you probably never would. GRRRR! This really bothered me, so I blurted out, "you obviously have no experience with life." I think the guy in the seat behind me knew exactly how I would react because he smiled at me. First off the guy in the back is extremely annoying. He tries to take over the classroom every time, and he obviously has nothing else to do at work besides read the news, or surf the web, because he thinks he knows everything. So far the rest of us have bitten our tongues, but it is just getting to be too much. I paid to take a class and listen to my professor teach, not listen to him all day. If he wants to get into discussions with the professor about subjects other than economics he should maybe meet up with him for coffee and donuts one day, otherwise he needs to just shut up. YES I am venting here, I shouldn't have taken his comments personally, but I did.

Okay, back to the subject at hand, the GI Bill. My point is that not everyone gets out of the military and decides to jump into college, especially fulltime. Life goes on, we get married, we have children, we get jobs. Not only that, some of us don't even realize the importance of an education until later in life. Maybe we have a job that pays well, but end up losing the job, then we have to consider other options. Wow, maybe going back to school is an option. Or maybe it is just as simple as the fact that we enjoy learning and what is wrong with being a lifetime learner? Maybe taking a few classes here and there is just something that we find appealing.

One thing that I did learn in my Economics class was that many parents here in Michigan have never really believed that you have to have a college education. Of course this is compared to other states. You see, many Michiganians have been employed by the Big Three, or their parents are/were employed and they did fine financially without an education. You didn't need an education to work in a factory. Well I can't say that in my particular case the automotive industry had an impact on my parents decision to encourage/or not encourage me to go to college. You see in my family I am the only one to attend college out of my parents generation/my generation. My father quit school in 12th grade to go to Viet Nam, while my mother did not finish because her mother died when she was young and she had to raise her siblings. My sister has a learning disability so she struggled in school and never completed high school. So the point I am making is that college was mentioned here and there as I was growing up, but this was rare. I don't remember being encouraged, or prepared for a college education. My decision to get an education was pretty much my own decision, and I didn't make this decision until after I did my four years of military service, marriage and the birth of my first child. These things put a halt to my dreams of an education, well maybe not a halt, but I did have to put them off for a bit.

So here I am now, fifteen years after my last day in the military, and still working on my education. Do I feel that I should be eligible for those military benefits? Yes! What happens if I do end up laid off permanently from the automotive industry? Shouldn't I be able to use those benefits for help me out with getting another job? Yes! Should I not be allowed a tuition paid education because my life didn't follow an ideal path? As much as we would like our lives to be perfect they never are, but that doesn't mean that we should give up, right?

Isn't it better for the economy to have a better educated work force. More educated individuals lead to more jobs being created, to improving our production possibilities, to having more money available to spend on products & services, to lowering our unemployment rate, which even leads to lower crime rates. Why wouldn't the government want to leave these educational options open. This I don't understand, so maybe if someone out there has an idea please clue me in.

For those of you that don't know, during the first year of the military we have the option to invest a certain portion into the G.I. Bill. The rest of the money is provided by the military. So what in fact happens is that if you don't use up the benefits within the ten year timeframe, you lose all the money that you invested.

Now all of this is based on my experience with the G.I. Bill. It is possible that the bill has been modified since 2001 when mine expired. I'm hoping that it has changed. Actually I am a member of the VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars) so I imagine that this is probably a topic that I could look into more deeply. Maybe I will.