It's Harder for Your Generation

· One out of three young adults lacks health insurance, making them the biggest pool of uninsured workers. And it's not because they think they don't need it: Only 3 percent of young workers lack insurance because they declined available coverage.

She reserves her greatest outrage for the nation's "debt for diploma" system of funding higher education, demonstrating how it affects every aspect of young people's lives, limiting their career opportunities and delaying their plans to buy their own homes or raise families. "Going $20,000 into debt for a bachelor's degree is not the way it's always been," she said.

It certainly wasn't that way for the parents of the boomers. The "Greatest Generation," it turns out, was also the beneficiary of one of the Greatest Successes in American Public Policy.

The GI Bill provided plenty of money to help returning veterans head to school. In 1948, veterans were given $500 a year -- "enough at that time to pay for all but $25 of tuition at Harvard," Draut points out. They also received a $50-a-month stipend for living expenses, about $400 in today's dollars.

In contrast, the average federal grant to students in 2003 was $2,421, which fell, oh, $24,000 short of Harvard tuition.

And what did the government get for providing all this assistance to young people? Lazy, spoiled, good-for-nothing whiners? No, indeed. They got a thriving middle class, Draut writes. They got the hundreds of thousands of accountants, teachers, scientists and engineers who helped fuel the long postwar economic expansion. "Not a bad payback for a mere $91 billion investment (in today's dollars)."

Draut would like to see a revival of that sort of investment in education, one that goes further than merely tinkering with the system through tax breaks and incremental increases in Pell grants. She derided Congress's recent efforts at reform of higher education funding as "a bit like the fire department pulling up to a five-alarm fire with a garden hose."

Government could make a difference again, Draut believes, but for that to happen, young adults will have to become more involved in the political process, instead of believing the myth that their circumstances are entirely personal -- even when it comes to their careers.

Career Track Goes on Break

There will be no Career Track or Career Track Live for the next few months while I am on leave. But please continue to e-mail me your column ideas and suggestions at slayterme@washpost.com.