Do You Know More Than Your Rep?

in Education by Candice Shakur — June 15, 2011 at 8:29 am | 0 comments

Does the Government Need to Return to School?

The recently published “How Educated are State Legislators?” might have a lot of people questioning their assumptions about college. In this surprising report, the Chronicle of Higher Education staff looked at which colleges America’s 7,000-plus state legislators graduated from and surprisingly, they found that about 25% of our nation’s lawmakers hadn’t graduated from anywhere.

That’s right. Nearly one in four of our country’s state-level legislators don’t have bachelor’s degrees.

Where is Your State on the List?

According to their research, California’s state legislators were most likely to have college degrees, with nearly 90% of them having at least a bachelor’s degree. New Hampshire, on the other hand, ranked 50th with only about half of its legislators finishing college. My current home of Illinois is near the top of the list, with almost 82%.

Remember all the talk about California’s impending bankruptcy? Or any of Illinois’s corruptions du jour? Well, I think it’s fair to say that more college degrees don’t necessarily mean better government-made decisions.

Does College Really Matter?

Michael Peterson, a Representative from Kansas pointed out to the Wall Street Journal, “In 22 years, I don’t recall academic credentials ever once coming up. People are judged on their merit.”

Peterson’s comment has been all over the news and I can think of at least one reason why: it’s true for so many of us! See, unlike the 1700 or so state legislators who never finished,

I:

• graduated from college in 2003

• majored in English Literature and

• minored in French

• made the Honor Roll a few times, but was mostly

• was happy with an average standing in school

This worked out fine for me, until senior year rolled around. As the impending job search loomed near, I started to get a little nervous.

Should I have worked harder to stay in the Honors Program? Should I have studied for just one of those Biology exams? Should I have at least tried to understand Calculus?

What I Learned from My Job Search

By the time these questions crossed my mind, it was really too late to do anything about them. So, a little embarrassed and a lot regretful, I started my job search.

You know what? No one asked me about my grades. Not a single interviewer cared about my understanding of Calculus, or that I had even taken it at all. After the first few interviews, when I finally understood that no one was going to ask me about my grades or even about my grade point average, I calmed down a little and eventually landed my first post-college job.
I won’t go so far as to say college doesn’t matter because it does! Every single job I applied to that year, and every year since then, has required applicants to have a college degree. So even though I’ve never had to fess up to my “D” in Biology, the fact that I went to college surely helped me get the interview.

Overall, my experience has been a lot like the one Rep. Peterson described. My credentials haven’t come up, but my abilities have.

Tags: california government higher education school