No, it’s true; I don’t consider it an iron-clad requirement that the president of the United States have a college degree. There could be extenuating circumstances that make a lack of formal education less damning. In Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s case, he did receive a formal education even if he didn’t complete it. And he’s had extensive political and executive experience. We have many examples of highly successful people who have no college degree, although both Steve Jobs and Bill Gates did, like Walker, at least begin an undergraduate career before dropping out.
All things being equal, however, a thorough education should be considered highly preferable for someone being hired to be the most powerful person on Earth, and I can’t think of a single argument against this idea that makes any sense.
Certainly, I cannot agree that being a college dropout is an asset that speaks in favor of a presidential candidate. The reason I want my president to have a thorough education is not because it’s a “class signifier,” nor because I prefer to have a mandarin class running our government. In fact, I have criticized the Obama administration for neglecting state schools and non-elite college graduates in their hiring practices.
A good president needs many skills and character traits, but a huge foundation of knowledge is extremely important because it makes them less dependent on their advisers. George W. Bush managed to get a couple of Ivy League degrees without learning much about the world, which was even less impressive when you consider that his father was, among other things, our unofficial ambassador to China, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, a two-term vice president with a national security brief, and the president when the Berlin Wall came down. Under the circumstances, you’d think that George W. would have learned enough by osmosis to dwarf the knowledge of someone like Bill Clinton, but he didn’t even know as much as Gary Bauer who was a lowly janitor’s son.
If you can acquire this broad base of knowledge outside of college classrooms, that’s preferable to not acquiring it within them. The important thing is that you have it. Without it, the foolishness of a Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld or Condoleeza Rice might be what counts for wise counsel, and where are we then?
So, I’m not being an impudent snob when I say that Scott Walker’s lack of college degree isn’t confidence inspiring. But he’ll have plenty of opportunity to demonstrate that he has the knowledge base we have the right to expect in a president.
We know Hillary Clinton has that knowledge base, so we’ll be focused on different concerns in her case, like her vitality, judgment, and choice of close advisers.
