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Show Gl Bill Six Years Old, Majority Of 15 Million Uets Have Benefitted June 22 was the sixth birthday birth-day of the GI Bill, a law passed June 22, 1944, to help World War II veterans get back into the swing of civilian living. During the six years the act has been in effect, a majority of the nation's 15,300,000 World War II veterans have benefitted by one or more of its three major ma-jor provisions. Those provisions are education educa-tion and training at Government expense: Government - guaranteed guaran-teed t and insured loans for homes, farms and businesses, and a readjustment allowance program ta help tide veterans over during periods of unemployment unem-ployment or glack self-empoy-ment. Here's the record of the GI Bill to date, as disclosed today by the Veterans Administration. Some 7,000,000 ex-servicemen and women, at some time or another an-other have attended school or trained pn-tle-jpb or on-the-farm Under tjie law's educational prp-Visions. prp-Visions. This prqgrsm so far has cost more than $10 billion for tuition, supplies and subsistence sub-sistence allowances, All together, the veterans spent a total of 93,000,000 months in the classroom, at the work bench and on the farm, or an average of about 15 months of training per veteran. Onlv four rwr ppnt of nil vet erans who have been in training, train-ing, or around 300,000 have exhausted their entitlement to further GI Bill training. Under the law, most veterans must start their courses by July 25, 1951, if they want to continue con-tinue on after that date. The final cut-off, for most veterans comes on July 25, 1956. More than $11 billion of GI loans have been obtained by 2,100,000 World War II veterans veter-ans during the six years of the GI Bill. Ninety-two per cent of the veteran's loans, or 1,940,000 were for homes. Another 121,- 000 were for businesses, and the remaining 57,500 were for farms and farm equipment. Veterans have turned out to be good loan risks. Only .7 of 1 per cent of the loans were defaulted de-faulted to the extent that V-A had to make good the guaranteed guaran-teed and insured portions. The GI loan program has another an-other seven years to go, ending for the majority of veterans on July 25, 1957. Because the program pro-gram still has a long ife ahead of it, V-A had advised veterans that there's no need to rush into the program without thinking things over carefully. Readjustment allowances for unemployment and self-employments a third major GI Bill benefit ended for most veterans vet-erans on July 25, 1949, although a comparative trickle of applications appli-cations continues from veterans who still are eligible. During the six years of the GI Bill, about 9,000,000 veterans drew readjustment allowances that totaled $3.8 billion. V-A's experience has been that the average veteran found a job after having been on the readjustment rolls for about a months and a half, despite the fact that benefits could extend in most cases for as long as 52 weeks. |