The late Robert Maynard Hutchins, erstwhile head of the University of Chicago, was generally regarded as a brilliant individual and an outstanding educator. Among his many achievements was one that was dearly appreciated by his faculty: the abolition of football at the school.

But even the Hutchinses of the world can be wrong about important matters and the Chicago U. president was indeed that in the middle 1940s.

Early in 1944, Kansas American Legion leader Harry Colmery engineered the now-famous GI Bill of Rights. It was opposed by a surprising number of people, in view of the great positive impact it ultimately had on America. At one point President Franklin Roosevelt was not even sure it was in the best interests of the country.

Racist politicians opposed any provisions of the bill they thought would “put money in the pockets of black veterans” of World War II. A number of elitist educators, of which Robert Maynard Hutchins was one, strongly opposed higher education as one of the benefits.

“Colleges and universities,” warned Hutchins, “will find themselves converted into educational hobo jungles.” Many are still laughing, very hard, about that prediction.

Knight Ridder writers Paul Dickson and Thomas B. Allen, in tracing the development of the GI Bill from the days of World War I’s Bonus Army, note that on June 22, 1944, President Roosevelt put aside his longstanding opposition to “privileges” for veterans and signed the GI Bill into law.

By 1956, Dickson and Allen point out, that “bill” had helped to produce 450,000 engineers, 238,000 teachers, 91,000 scientists, 67,000 doctors, 22,000 dentists and more than a million other college-trained men and women. That’s a horrible lot of “hoboes,” many of whom camped out at schools such as Kansas University in their quest to battle out of the “jungle.”

Further, 11 million of the 13 million houses built in the 1950s were financed with GI Bill loans. There also was financing for vocational training for thousands and short-term aid for jobless veterans. The big kicker here is that the total cost of the original GI Bill, which continues to benefit service people, was $14 billion — mere pocket change compared to some of today’s costly and inefficient programs.

As Dickson and Allen conclude, “The GI Bill helped to create a well-educated, well-housed, new American middle class whose consumption patterns fueled the postwar economy” and set standards of achievement for decades. Economist Peter Drucker has written: “Future historians may consider it (the GI Bill) the most important event of the 20th century.” Certainly one could make a case for its being the most vital piece of legislation in American annals.

It’s amazing how many of the struggling “hoboes” from World War II dipped their cups into the crackling cauldron of gratitude from the nation and repaid the “handout” time and again.