The Party Line

Legislative Credentials

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By Peter Onear

I attended a recent higher-education conference in my state capital and happened to sit at dinner with a group of university presidents and provosts. When the conversation inevitably turned to politics, the group began commenting on the number of state legislators who have college educations.

"I think it's less than 30 percent," one provost speculated.

A president shook her head as if pitying the poor uneducated legislators. "Have you noticed how they list themselves as 'attended' when they haven't graduated?" she added.

A provost across the table from me rolled his eyes and exclaimed, "God help us all!"

We laughed and sipped our wine.

Well, I laughed less. Over the years, I too have participated in making fun of legislators' lack of formal education. How ironic that those uneducated buffoons are making laws and appropriating money for higher education.

However, my attitude has changed over the years as I've worked more closely with lawmakers and have become more involved with the legislative process.

According to various "legislative profiles" on the Web, a more accurate figure for the proportion of America's approximately 7,400 legislators who have finished a college degree is 50 percent, not 30 percent. Almost 20 percent of state lawmakers are lawyers. In the House and Senate districts that include and surround my university, six of the eight state legislators have college degrees. Three are lawyers, two are teachers, and one has a finance degree. Three of the six degree holders are alumni of my university.

Perhaps it's unusual, and perhaps I am fortunate to have so many "educated" legislators involved in my university. However, I'm not certain that I'm any more fortunate than my government-relations colleagues who may have only one or two legislators with college degrees.

I've come to the conclusion that having a college degree is no more of an indicator that a legislator will be a strong supporter of higher education than not having one. The fact is, pretty much every legislator is intelligent, but not all of them are interested in higher education.

For example, I brag about my university being surrounded by highly educated lawmakers, but the one in whose district my university resides is primarily interested in health and human-service issues. She doesn't serve on any education or finance committees. While she is supportive of the university and wants to be kept informed, she is not the first person I go to when there is a state issue involving my university. And that's OK with her.

There are a variety of ways that lawmakers become legislative "experts." Sometimes their areas of interest are dictated by party needs. The House Democrats may need an insurance expert and assign that role to a new legislator. Or the Senate Republicans may need a new Medicaid expert to fill the slot of a term-limited senator.

Other times, the profession of legislators dictates their assignments. Farmers (and there are a surprisingly large number of farmers who are lawmakers) often pursue assignments on agriculture committees. Occasionally, personal interest determines a legislator's emphasis. I knew an urban lawmaker who was a hunter and fisherman; despite not having much hunting and fishing in his district, he was involved in state parks and wildlife legislation.

So where does that leave higher education? Even if the presidents and provosts at that conference dinner table have some of their statistics wrong, are they still correct in their general opinion that few politicians truly advocate for higher education in the legislature, and that most view academe negatively? Would a state legislature filled with more college graduates correspondingly benefit higher education?

Let me put it another way: Would you want your university's faculty senate in charge of your entire state? I shudder at the thought.

The single most important bone of contention between government at all levels and higher education, both public and private, is that legislators and educators differ on the purpose of higher education.

Government believes higher education should be for the greater public good. Lots of people should be college educated, and then all of those educated citizens will make the economy stronger and the country a better place to live. University administrators and faculty members believe that they are, first and foremost, responsible for the intellectual advancement of the individual. It is equally important for a student to study music or engineering, and either of those is equally important to the commonweal.

For years legislators were willing to go along with academe's point of view for two reasons. First, very intelligent people (university presidents) told lawmakers that that was the correct way to go. Second, universities turned out enough engineers, lawyers, economists, teachers, and social workers to keep society functioning.

But for the last 20 years, a perfect storm has been brewing that has finally descended on higher education. Lots of words that you all know are used to describe elements of that storm. Accountability. Globalization. High tuition. Student-loan scandals. Economic development. Exorbitant endowments. State fiscal crises. Forced collaborations. Even violence on campuses.

Lawmakers, college educated or not, have correctly perceived that higher education must be better "managed" at the state level -- for all the reasons listed above and more. University presidents and provosts as well as administrators in finance offices and government relations have found ourselves scrambling to respond to legislators who propose solutions like withholding state subsidies or granting administrative powers over colleges and universities to a centralized board.

Perhaps it is all right now and then, while sipping wine at dinner, for us to act superior to our uneducated legislative counterparts. Maybe they, too, are having a glass of wine together and making comments about the intellectual snobs who run higher education.

Nevertheless, in the morning, we all had better put aside those prejudices for the sake of the future of higher education.