This report is the first in a series examining the troubled history of for-profit higher education, from the problems that plagued the post-World War II GI Bill to the reform efforts undertaken by the George H. W. Bush administration. Thanks to the GI Bill, millions of soldiers returning from World War II had the opportunity to enroll in college or job-training programs, and had access low-interest loans to buy homes. What has been largely forgotten, however, is that the GI Bill also led to systematic abuses at for-profit school. Treating the Veterans Administration (VA) as their primary funder, opportunistic entrepreneurs established schools and set their tuition rates at the maximum amount that the VA would pay. Many schools falsified their expenditure data and attendance records, overcharged for supplies, and billed the VA for students who were not even enrolled, all in order to tap taxpayers for every penny they could get. While the GI Bill helped millions of returning veterans go to college, it also fed an explosion of misleading advertising, predatory recruitment practices, sub-standard training, and outright fraud in for-profit education. In the aftermath of the proprietary school scandals of the GI Bill, Eisenhower and Congress limited the funding to public and nonprofit colleges. The better part of a decade would pass before Congress would open the door to using federal student loans at for-profit schools.