Jayme Johnson, a third-year Duke graduate student studying genetics, receives financial assistance through the GI Bill because of her mother's disability. Photo credit: Photo by Jon Gardiner

Durham, NC - If Jayme Johnson can find any piece of a silver lining in her mother's struggle with bipolar disorder, it's thanks to the GI Bill.

The third-year Duke graduate student began receiving $900 a month through the federal program after her mother, a 20-year Army veteran, was diagnosed with the disorder last December. Johnson, who is still paying off student loans from her undergraduate years at Carleton College in Minnesota, said her mother can no longer work or help her with school costs.

"I was absolutely flabbergasted when her VA counselor told me I could get money because of her disability," said Johnson, 24, who is studying genetics. "I bought a house so having a mortgage, especially during a time like this, it's not an easy burden to bear."

Johnson is one of many at Duke and millions of Americans to benefit from the GI Bill since its inception 64 years ago. A new, more generous version of the bill takes effect in August 2009.

With added education benefits and thousands of troops eventually returning from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the new bill is expected to boost college enrollment among veterans and their dependents.

"Logic tells you there's going to be an increase in enrollment across the board for these folks," said Bruce Cunningham, Duke's registrar.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the original Servicemen's Readjustment Act in 1944 to help avoid a potential social and economic crisis as millions of troops returned to civilian life after World War II.

The GI Bill in its various forms (it was last significantly updated in 1984) has provided veterans, service members and dependents with benefits that include education and training, loan guaranties for homes, farms and businesses, and unemployment pay, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. The original legislation "is one of the greatest examples of social policy," Duke political science professor Peter Feaver told The New York Times earlier this year.

The GI Bill is credited with making higher education widely available, which transformed America's middle class. By 1947, for instance, veterans accounted for nearly half of all college admissions.

"They intended this GI Bill of Rights simply as a bit of help for the 16 million men and women who so bravely served their country," according to Edward Humes' book "Over Here: How the G.I. Bill Transformed the American Dream." "Instead, quite by accident, it transformed America and rewrote the American dream. The GI Bill made homeowners, college graduates, professionals, rocket scientists and a booming middle class out of a Depression-era generation that never expected such opportunity. Today's America was built on the bill's greatness. The ‘greatest generation' would not exist without it."

One of the first military service members to attend Duke with help from the GI Bill was the late Edmund T. Pratt Jr., an electrical engineering major who came to the university in 1944 for Navy officer training. He graduated magna cum laude in 1947 after a three-year accelerated program. Pratt went on to become a philanthropist, Duke trustee and chairman and chief executive officer for Pfizer Inc. His gift of $35 million in 1999 endowed the engineering school, now the Edmund T. Pratt Jr. School of Engineering.

More than 500,000 people received GI Bill benefits during fiscal year 2007, according to the Veterans Administration. In North Carolina, about 10,000 people take part in various programs under the GI Bill each year, including college degree and non-college degree programs, on-the-job training and apprenticeships, reports the North Carolina State Approving Agency, which administers the GI Bill's education benefits in the state.

Duke has averaged between 29 and 41 students who attend with help from the GI Bill over the past three years, according to the agency. That number could rise in the coming years, thanks to the new version of the GI Bill.

The Post-9/11 Veterans Education Assistance Act of 2008 will help military service members and veterans who served after Sept. 11, 2001 pay for college. The bill, signed by President Bush on June 30, more than doubles the value of the current benefit from $40,000 to $90,000 and includes a housing stipend and the option to transfer benefits to dependents. Activated National Guard members and reservists also benefit under the bill.

To qualify, veterans must have served at least three to 36 months of qualified active duty, beginning on or after Sept. 11, 2001. Benefits are proportional to time served.

The legislation, introduced by U.S. Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., a decorated Vietnam veteran and former Navy secretary, will pay up to the cost of the most expensive in-state tuition and fees at a public institution in the veteran's state. The measure also includes an option for more expensive schools such as Duke, in which the Veterans Administration and the institution can agree to share the additional cost.

"I would like to emphasize that this is not simply an expansion of veterans' educational benefits," Webb said in a statement. "This is a new program, a deserved program. It has now been nearly seven years since 9/11 -- seven years since those who have been serving in our military began earning the right for a proper wartime GI Bill."