Since the GI Bill radically changed U.S. higher education, the question arose as to whether (then) American Association of Colleges, AAC was involved in the planning and implementation of the GI Bill that brought service men and women to college and university campuses. The answer is that the Association was deeply involved, if one looks at the guest speakers at AAC?s Annual Meeting of January 10 to 12, 1945, held in Atlantic City, New Jersey. At this meeting, the presidents in attendance heard about postwar planning from such speakers as Archibald MacLeish, poet and assistant secretary of state, who spoke about the democratization of communications after the war. General George C. Marshall, chief of staff of the United States Army, spoke off the record (because he did not want his talk in the press before he had presented this proposal to Congress) on the topic "Compulsory Military Training." Charles H. Bolte, chairman of the American Veterans Committee, a disabled veteran and alumnus of Dartmouth College Class of 1940, spoke about the impact of the GI Bill on the nation?s campuses.