Presidents who did not attend college George Washington Andrew Jackson Martin Van Buren Zachary Taylor Millard Fillmore Abraham Lincoln Andrew Johnson Grover Cleveland Harry Truman (Truman attended 2 years of law school)
Presidents who attended college but did not graduate William Henry Harrison William McKinley
Presidents who were university presidents James A. Garfield Woodrow Wilson Dwight Eisenhower
Posts: 7623 | Location: in the backwoods of North Carolina | Registered: 06-07-02
Garfield, a highly educated man in the classics, became president of Western Reserve Eclectic Institute, now Hiram College, in 1856. In 1859, he was elected to the US Senate. (Trivial Note - Fluent in both Latin and Greek, he could write one using one hand while writing the other with the other hand.) Eisenhower graduated from West Point in 1915, and was a career Army officer. He left the army in 1948 and became president of Columbia University in New York City, where he remained until becoming President in 1953. (Trivial Note - Eisenhower hated cats, and kept a shotgun handy at his farm at Gettysburg to shoot any strays.) Wilson graduated from Princeton (then the College of New Jersey) and the University of Virginia Law School, and earned his doctorate at Johns Hopkins University. Wilson served on the faculties of Bryn Mawr College and Wesleyan University before joining the Princeton faculty as professor of jurisprudence and political economy in 1890, and became president of Princeton in 1902, serving until 1910, when he became Governor of New Jersey. (Trivial Note - Wilson is the sole US President to have earned a doctorate degree.)
I don't know, but strongly suspect, that Eisenhower's appointment to Columbia was more of a publicity move on the university's part than any acknowledgement of his academic acumen; he enjoyed great popularity in the nation after WWII. Both political parties wanted Eisenhower to run as their candidate in 1948 and again in 1952. I have read that he accepted the Republican bid, not because he was a Republican, but because there hadn't been a Republican President for 20 years, and he strongly believed in a two-party system. Garfield and WIlson were both highly educated, and Wilson was definitely an academic.
Posts: 16662 | Location: Lincoln Place, Granite City, IL, USA | Registered: 06-03-02
Where do George W. Bush and John Kerry fit in to all this? Kerry was a practising lawyer. Now we all know that lawyers must the most intellectually able people in politics, don't we ? Well, one of us does, sort of ( whilst wondering "If they are so hot why don't they stick to the Bar, instead of wasting their time on a job that pays comparatively badly, is completely uncertain and for large parts of the time expects them to act like sheep ? ")
quote:Originally posted by Jelp01: Since both Kerry and Bush graduated from Yale within two years of each other, then they should be equally qualified if education counts.
Not necessarily. For one thing, Kerry also has a Law degree, implying more education.
Looking back up the thread a bit, I don't know about Washington's education, but I do know that he was an engineer, and therefore probably better educated than the run of folk in those days. After all, back then, not many medical doctors actually had a degree, nor did other professionals. My own grandfather Stevens became an internationally respected fuels chemist on the basis of two years at Carnegie Tech...
Alan Moore
Posts: 2012 | Location: USA | Registered: 10-05-03
The second of my links indicates that Washington received a surveyor's license from the College of William and Mary.
Mind you, while Kerry received a law degree, Bush continued his education and was awarded an M.B.A. from Harvard.
I like Alan's report on his grandfather. My own was kicked out of a high school military academy as his last education and went on to become Chairman of a Fortune company. And a former colleague, armed with a B.S., is considered the leading expert in the US on a particular mechanical engineering discipline (and writes the standard handbook given to nearly all college engineering students).
Posts: 7623 | Location: in the backwoods of North Carolina | Registered: 06-07-02
I gather that Kerry was a sound prosecutor and so made practical and effective use of his learning . He certainly had the measure of the 'defendant' in the first Debate
By way of comparison, did Mr Bush's subsequent career in business demonstrate that he could apply whatever learning he had acquired ?
quote:Originally posted by FredPuli: I gather that Kerry was a sound prosecutor and so made practical and effective use of his learning . He certainly had the measure of the 'defendant' in the first Debate
By way of comparison, did Mr Bush's subsequent career in business demonstrate that _he_ could apply whatever learning he had acquired ?
Mr. Bush's oil exploration company was brilliant at bringing in dry holes. It floundered along with periodic influxes of cash from friends of the family until Bush decided to give it up.
Then as owner of the Texas Rangers baseball ("the American version of cricket") team, he traded Sammy Sosa who went on to become home-run record holder.
As a businessman, he was a good politician?
Alan Moore
Posts: 2012 | Location: USA | Registered: 10-05-03
( whilst wondering "If they are so hot why don't they stick to the Bar, instead of wasting their time on a job that pays comparatively badly, is completely uncertain and for large parts of the time expects them to act like sheep ? ")
