Where 5 U.S. Presidents’ Inner Circles Went to College

When Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Kamala D. Harris officially became a ticket last August, it wasn’t long before talk began over where they had gone to college — or, actually, where they hadn’t.

Neither has an Ivy League degree. Biden is a graduate of the University of Delaware and the law school at Syracuse University. And Harris — a Howard University alumna who went on to the University of California’s Hastings College of the Law — will be the first graduate of a historically Black college to serve as vice president.

The Chronicle looked at the college choices and degrees earned by some of the key figures he’s surrounding himself with, and how they compare with those of the last four presidential administrations. Use this interactive graphic to find out more. Click on each official’s portrait for information about their earned degrees.

Methodology

The Chronicle used publicly available information to compile a database of the alma maters of cabinet members for five U.S. presidents: Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald J. Trump, and Biden.

For this project, the cabinet is defined as the vice president, the cabinet secretaries, including the attorney general, and the chief of staff. For every administration except for Biden’s, only cabinet members confirmed by the Senate are included.

The Chronicle excluded colleges from which presidents and their cabinets did not earn degrees. The names of the colleges, to the best of our knowledge, reflect what they were called when the degrees were conferred. Degrees are listed in the order in which they were received.

Officials who served in more than one administration are pictured in each one. But in order not to skew the overall tallies, officials who held more than one post in a single administration are pictured only once in that administration

Small private colleges have undergraduate enrollments of 3,000 students or fewer, according to fall 2018 data, the most recent available, from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System.