LINCOLN — The next time you hear someone gripe about “those knuckleheads down at the State Capitol,” you might want to consider this:
As a group, Nebraska’s 49 state senators are more educated than all but two other state legislatures in the country.
The Chronicle of Higher Education published a comparison of educational achievement of state lawmakers this week showing that California has the most-degreed legislators, with 89.9 percent earning a bachelor’s degree or higher.
Virginia ranked No. 2 at 88.6 percent, followed by Nebraska, with 87.3 percent of its lawmakers possessing a college degree or post-graduate degree.
The least-educated legislatures, according to the Chronicle, were in Delaware, 59.7 percent; Maine, 58 percent; and New Hampshire, 53.4 percent.
Neighboring Iowa’s legislators ranked slightly below average, with 71.3 percent of its 150 state representatives and senators holding bachelor’s degrees or more. The national average was 75 percent.
Nebraskans ought to be proud that their state lawmakers are such an educated bunch and are willing to serve in public office, said Paul Landow, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.
Nebraska is better off with a better-educated Legislature, according to Landow.
“More education is better under nearly every circumstance,” he said.
Those with advanced degrees, Landow and others said, have learned how to research issues and consider the nuances of complicated subjects, which helps in tackling complex problems.
But three state senators, while saying that education is important and helpful, said that you can’t discount good old nonacademic horse sense.
“There are some very, very smart, crafty people who have no formal degrees,” said State Sen. Bill Avery of Lincoln, a retired political science professor who has a doctorate from Tulane University.
Avery cited Sen. Lavon Heidemann, chairman of the Legislature’s powerful Appropriations Committee.
Heidemann is among at least four Nebraska state senators who have no college degree, according to the campaign watchdog group, Project Vote Smart, which was the source of the Chronicle’s education degree figures.
Heidemann farms near Elk Creek, Neb., and works for a mining company testing the quantity of rare-earth minerals in his area. He said he’d always intended to attend college but could never decide what degree to pursue, then just got too busy.
“Life has been my teacher,” Heidemann said. “Common sense goes a long ways.”
“He’s earned a doctorate in Nebraska budgets,” said Sen. Mike Flood of Norfolk, the speaker of the Legislature, who has a law degree and practices law when not running the Legislature or two Norfolk radio stations.
Flood is also one of the 25 state senators identified in the article who have degrees from the same institution: the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Flood said he believes that lawmakers see value in higher education regardless of where they attended college.
“But I’m also a supporter of Wayne State College and Northeast Community College because they’re in my district,” he said.
Avery, who taught for more than three decades at UNL, said there’s definitely some loyalty for your alma mater or where you worked.
“People with a lot of college experience, they appreciate what we’re trying to do,” he said of UNL. While many state agencies took budget cuts last year, the university system’s budget remained the same, which was a victory, according to Avery.
Although he never attended college, Heidemann has been a supporter of funding for higher education. He said he gained that appreciation not by sitting in a classroom but while serving in the Legislature, by learning the wide-ranging benefits the state receives through higher education.
One of the authors of the Chronicle’s story, Scott Smallwood, said Monday that they undertook the story, in part, to address complaints heard for years that state lawmakers, particularly those without college degrees, don’t understand the needs of higher education.
Those complaints didn’t seem to pan out, Smallwood said, when it was found that three out of every four state legislators in the nation have bachelor’s degrees or higher.
That compares with 28 percent of the total population, he said, which raises another question: Are legislators out of touch with mainstream Americans because their education level is so much higher?
After all, one of the founding fathers, John Adams, said that our public officials ought to be “in miniature” an exact reflection of the citizenry at large.
Landow, the UNO political scientist, said that’s a bunch of hogwash: “elites” have always governed.
“It used to be social pedigree, it used to be a certain university, it used to be any number of social or religious or economic standards,” he said. “Now, primarily, elites are those with a higher education.”
Contact the writer:
402-473-9584, paul.hammel@owh.com
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