This afternoon we were driving through a less-than-wonderful neighborhood in east Oakland, and there was a 6-story-high billboard on the side of a building for the Master's in Sports Administration at the University of Oregon. Wonder if the U of O selected that neighborhood demographic, or had it fobbed off on them by the billboard company.
Upper Iowa has (had?) for a long time a degree completion program where military students could take their degrees by correspondence (usually transferring in the first two years of credit from multiple sources) and then complete the last 15 units in a semester on campus. This was, at the time, highly innovative and extremely popular. Simultaneously, the Air Force had a program named Operation Bootstrap, designed to help enlisted personnel finish their degrees. The program had two components. First, there was tuition assistance. (Each service component operated its own T/A program.) The second was a "permissive temporary duty" program where the member could be assigned to go to school for up to one year. He/she would receive all their pay and benefits, but would have to pay their education (no T/A) and travel expenses. This being the late 1970s, though, most participants used their GI Bill education benefits to pay for school. After graduation, members would return to duty. (Technically, they never left; they were still assigned to their units and returned to their duties after graduation.) A lot of people went on to Officer Training School after that, but there was no quid pro quo or guarantee that they would be sent, nor was it a requirement. A lot of Air Force enlisted folks used Bootstrap to finish their degrees at Upper Iowa. The "Big Three" were just getting established back then. As an education specialist back then, I processed thousands of T/A requests and dozens of Bootstrap applications. Oh, and I moved dozens of people into the "Big Three" after counseling them. Me included.
