Pre-war, higher education was mostly an advantage for the wealthy. Post-war, the GI Bill drove up enrollment for white men. Home loans and small business loans further benefited this group. Almost 50% of veterans started their own businesses.
Women on the other hand accounted for only 0.8% of the GI Bill beneficiaries.
While black men were eligible for the benefits, universities refused to admit them and housing opportunities were too limited for access to loans to mean much. See Zoning and covenants were used to segregate and restrict POC real estate opportunities (Oluo).
In short, the GI bill continued the pattern established by Women and POC were largely left out of Great Depression aid programs (Oluo).
The GI Bill provided education, training, financial relief, home loans, small business loans, and more. Between those benefits and the new skills and businesses that had been opened up by wartime production, and with the financial support of the US government, many men found themselves on the path to financial security—even prosperity. Enrollment in college, which prior to the war had been a place still mostly reserved for wealthy and socially connected sons, skyrocketed, as did home ownership. Almost half of all veterans started their own businesses. 33 Women were almost completely cut out of GI benefits. Of the eight million WWII veterans who used the GI Bill, only about sixty-five thousand were women. 34 That’s 0.8 percent. Meanwhile, the average Black veteran found that the GI Bill simply returned him to his lower economic caste. College aid was offered to Black veterans, but it was moot; the vast majority of US colleges and universities refused to accept Black students, and those that did accepted so small a number that most Black veterans were unable to use the tuition benefits. Homeowner’s assistance was of even less use to Black vets, since banks refused to work with Black buyers, and cities redlined Black families into neighborhoods designed to keep the return on their investments as low as possible. The GI Bill was legislation designed to benefit only white men. — Mediocre, pg 151