THE POST-WAR ERA

Although less traumatic than the cataclysm that had swept the world from 1939 to 1945, the era just after World War II could hardly be described either globally or locally as the calm after the storm. The atomic age had dawned, the cold war was looming, the colonial order of the past century and a half was beginning to crumble, and the task of rebuilding amid the ruins of a shattered world lay ahead. Americans, though exhilarated by victory and optimistic about the possibilities of the future, first had to address the problem of exactly how to “beat swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks”; that is, how best to cope with the domestic economic, social, and psychological instability that is routinely the corollary of major wars. Immediately following the conflict a number of complex issues dominated national life. Among the most important of these were Inflation, shortages of housing and consumer goods, disruption of the labor market as soldiers returned home, personal and familial strains as veterans adjusted to peacetime pursuits, and the anxiety stemming from the emerging atomic age and the growing perception of a long-term threat from international and domestic communism. 

However, the war and its aftermath were to have more than short-term consequences. Over the next quarter century such factors as a steadily rising standard of living, the baby boom, and the democratization of schooling would have important implications for institutions of higher education across the nation. Iowa State Teachers College and its campus school were no exception and the changes each experienced would ultimately contribute to the permanent alteration of their character and modification of their mission.

World War II had significantly disrupted ISTC campus life, but the college could take pride in the fact that it had contributed to the war effort in important ways while simultaneously maintaining a viable program of teacher education. As the conflict drew to a close President Malcolm Price and his colleagues looked forward to again devoting themselves to establishing ISTC as Iowa’s professional school for teachers. To this end Price requested additional funds for instructional and housing facilities, resisted the temptation to become a liberal arts college, advocated higher standards of admission, and emphasized the importance of more faculty research and publication. 

However, circumstances immediately after the war meant that realizing these goals was initially to be a somewhat more complicated task than it might otherwise have been. In June 1944 President Roosevelt had signed the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act, popularly known as the GI Bill of Rights, which provided funds for education, low-interest mortgages and loans to start businesses, veterans’ hospitals, and up to a year’s unemployment coverage. The legislation made education and job training available to millions of Americans for whom these had previously not been readily affordable. Consequently, a flood of veterans swept onto the campuses of universities, colleges, and vocational training schools in the late 1940s and early 1950s. By 1951 almost eight million service men and women had taken advantage of the educational benefits under the GI Bill.