World War II transformed American higher education forever. The education soldiers received during and after the war altered their lives and the life of the nation. Fear of the psychological maladjustment of G.I.'s in the field led top military leaders to approve the use of psychological screening mechanisms that seemed to indicate educated soldiers were superior soldiers. That conclusion brought education to the forefront of state policy making and set the stage for the creation of a vast military-educational network that culminated in the 1944 G.I. Bill of Rights.1 By focusing on the American state's multifaceted use of higher education in World War II, this article advances the literature on the emergence of the American university beyond the rise of the federal-academic research matrix. Without question, the ascendance of research radically altered the nature of federal-academic relations, and it is exhibit A in the birth of what some scholars call the “proministrative state.” But the emphasis on big science—and the handful of elite institutions that produced it—has obscured crucial developments in American higher education that occurred outside federally funded labs.2
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Christopher P. Loss (2005) studied this question.