In 1942, my wife's uncle had just finished an apprenticeship as an electrician. He got drafted, and served from 1942 through early 1946 as an electrician at the Great Lakes Naval Station. In other words, instead of being an electrician in rural Wisconsin, he was an electrician at a military base in suburban Chicago. Neither severe nor dangerous duty. After the war, he went to the Milwaukee School of Engineering under the GI Bill to study electrical engineering. 

I got the government to pay for my education: I have a 30% service connected disability because of wounds, both physical and psychological, suffered in Vietnam.

My point is that government-paid education after WWII was of considerable benefit to the country.