Editorial: Lawmakers should know value of college diploma
Here are a couple of pop quiz questions for you:
How many of Georgia's state legislators hold at least a bachelor's degree?
How many state lawmakers have at least some college in their educational background?
The answers are 82 percent, and 5 percent, respectively, and you can be pardoned if you're a bit surprised.
This is, after all, a state legislature that, in the past few years, has taken a look at legislation prohibiting involuntary implantation of microchips in humans, has drafted legislation advocating secession from the United States, has seriously thought about moving the state's border northward into Tennessee to claim part of the Tennessee River to address water supply issues in this state, and clearly has wanted to set limits on areas of acceptable research in the state's public colleges and universities.
So, while it's certainly tempting to guess that relatively few of the 236 members of the Georgia General Assembly have even a nodding acquaintance with college (football excluded, of course), the numbers tell a far different story.
According to a study by the Chronicle of Higher Education on the educational levels of this country's 7,000 state legislators, as reported in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 193 of the 236 lawmakers currently elected to serve in Georgia - or, as noted, 82 percent of the total - have a bachelor's degree or higher.
Perhaps surprisingly, that's higher than the national average of 75 percent. What's more, it compares favorably with the most-educated state legislature in the nation, California, where 90 percent of lawmakers hold at least a bachelor's degree.
Additionally, Georgia's legislature far outdistances the least-educated deliberative body, in New Hampshire, where just 53 percent of members have a co
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