I think that the Chronicle of Higher Education is getting better… This week they’ve included a fascinating look (“How educated are state legislators?“) at the education levels of our elected officials in state legislatures. They are more educated than the public at large, not surprisingly, but perhaps surprisingly more than a quarter have no post-second education. Maybe it’s just state stereotypes but there’s some surprises.
Texas (86.2%) is more educated than Illinois (81.9%) and California is ahead of both (89.9%) but not that much more educated that Texas. Nebraska is up there with New York, Texas, California, and Virginia in the top five. The least educated is New Hampshire (53.4) which seems odd; the second lowest is Maine (58%), which has a lower percentage than Delaware (59.7), New Mexico (59.7%) and Arkansas (60.4%).
Democratic representatives seem to all support education, at least nominally but the Chronicle found both a Republican yahoo (“You go to college, you take a foreign language, and all these ridiculous diversity requirements…” and a reasonable Republican: “When costs go up, the rich can handle it and many poor students receive grants to cover their expenses,” she says. “But for middle-class families like my own, it makes a huge difference.”
