Voters Don't Care If Politicians Have a Degree. So Why Do They All Have One (or More)? | Opinion

Among the countless lies of newly-minted Congressman George Santos, perhaps none is more risible than his claim that he holds a bachelor's degree from (wait for it...) Baruch College. Not Harvard. Not Stanford. Not MIT. Baruch College. The genius lies in its banality. And yet, unlike many of his other "embellishments," such as when his mother died (yes, really), Santos's fib about earning a college diploma at least has some logic to it: A four-year degree has become a de facto requirement for election to public office in America.

In the last Congress, for example, all 100 Senators and 95 percent of House members held an undergraduate degree or higher. Compare that to just over a third of the U.S. population as a whole. Presidents Clinton, Bush, Obama, and (even) Trump held degrees from Ivy League universities.

Increasing diversity in public office has become a priority in recent years, particularly in the Democratic Party. Each successive wave of elected leaders is celebrated as being more and more diverse—by gender, race, sexual orientation, and other indicators. The point, aptly taken, is that our representatives should "look like" the country.

Yet when it comes to education—and socio-economic status more generally—diversity in politics is almost nonexistent. That's a problem.

Holding a college degree, much less from a fancy school, shouldn't be a strike against politicians. But neither should it be the prerequisite for running for public office that it's become. A diploma doesn't make one moral, intelligent, or wise. It's perhaps no coincidence that, as our society has increasingly conflated credentials with merit, and as college diplomas have become vetting mechanisms for holding public office, that trust in our institutions of power has collapsed.

Such arguments are not new. In 1972, the mere title of David Halberstam's The Best and The Brightest was a scathing indictment of the highly educated "experts" and policymakers who ensnared the U.S. in the Vietnam War. Economist Thomas Sowell has written similarly of the failings of intellectuals in governing. More recently, theorist Michael Sandel argued in The Tyranny of Merit that there's little advantage in having the "credentialed few govern over the uncredentialed many."

Higher education is also a filtering device for socio-economic status. Recent estimates, for instance, reveal that America's top universities enroll more students from the top 1 percent of households in the income distribution than from the lower 60 percent. If we want more representation of middle- and working-class politicians, even more reason to think that a diploma from Princeton—or Baruch College—isn't the end-all, be-all.

Empirical research confirms that holding a college degree doesn't confer on its recipients any special advantage in governing. Political scientists Nick Carnes and Noam Lupu, for example, found that college-educated politicians aren't more effective at passing bills, nor are they less corrupt. What's more, voters seem to agree. There's little evidence that attending higher education gives candidates an advantage at the ballot box. According to a recent study by one of us, voters also aren't more likely to support candidates with Ivy League credentials.

So if voters aren't judging on education, why are non-college-educated politicians such endangered species, in Washington and across the country?

It's a pipeline issue. More should be done to encourage and support Americans from less elite backgrounds to pursue politics professionally. For example, just as organizations have formed to support gender and racial diversity in public office, similar resources could be mobilized for blue-collar candidates. Some labor unions already do this on a local level, but as of yet, there's no national non-profit or PAC to foster interest on a larger scale.

Critically, political parties also need to cast a wider net in recruiting. From the Republican and Democratic national committees, to party machines at the state and local levels, finding candidates who don't fit the traditional "mold" could open up opportunities for fresh talent from diverse educational and career backgrounds. Over the long-run, seeing candidates with these resumes could inspire a new generation of public servants—from former farmers to factory workers—to run for office, as well.

There's potential upside in elections. There is currently a "diploma divide" that has voters without a college education increasingly switching from the Democrat to the Republican Party, a phenomenon that's become, in the words of one scholar, "at the heart of the political realignment shaping American politics." To the extent that non-college-educated politicians might appeal more to these constituents, both parties could capture larger shares of this critical swing vote.

Some of America's greatest leaders—including Washington, Lincoln, and Truman—lacked a college degree. While times have changed, and the rise of a new meritocratic class has hitched itself (often for good reason) to college education as a catalyst for personal and professional advancement, having more representatives from diverse backgrounds is worth striving for.

Thomas Gift (@tgiftiv) is Associate Professor of Political Science at University College London (UCL) and founding Director of the UCL Centre on US Politics (@CUSP_ucl). Julie Norman (@DrJulieNorman2) is Associate Professor of Politics and International Relations at UCL and Co-Director of the UCL Centre on US Politics.

The views expressed in this article are the writers' own.