OPINION:
Without a college degree you can go on to create a computer empire like Dell, Microsoft and Apple, build an airline company like Jet Blue, found an organic food company like Whole Foods, or just become a run-of-the-mill tech nerd and create WordPress, DropBox, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Spotify, Threadless or Pinterest. But some say you can’t be president of the United States.
This is the conventional thinking that has so many establishment elitists warning Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker that he is not qualified to sit in the Oval office.
His detractors fail to realize for the average middle-class American, these aren’t conventional times. As millions of millennials and their parents look at college as more overpriced and less a path to success as they did a generation ago, Mr. Walker can use his lack of a degree as a strength.
A successful presidential candidate must be able to relate to the American public. Ronald Reagan had a quick wit; Bill Clinton came from a poor town in Arkansas; George W. Bush was a guy you just wanted to have a beer with; and Barack Obama was a community organizer from Chicago who was friends with TV queen Oprah Winfrey.
Despite their extensive and differing pedigrees, they portrayed themselves as men of the people, tapping into the concerns and aspirations of the voters whose support they sought. Mr. Walker can do that as a man from a humble, blue-collar background who achieved success without following the predetermined notion that success requires at least one degree from a prestigious university. Reagan graduated from college after all, but the detractors of his day sniffed that a degree from Eureka College really didn’t count.
The notion that college isn’t for everyone is more commonplace in America today than it was just a few years ago. In Mr. Walker’s youth, young men and women went to college to prepare themselves for a lifetime of work. He has said that he went to college to get a job, got a job and left college. Today, one gets the impression that many young people go not to prepare for a career, but simply to go. A Country Financial poll found fewer Americans believe college remains the good investment it was assumed to be a decade ago; just 57 percent of Americans now view college in a positive light. A 2014 Gallup poll found only 44 percent of Americans now believe that getting a college degree is”very important.”
That same poll found that fewer people believe college is affordable for their oldest child than they did in 1995. That’s in great part due to the massive $1.2 trillion student loan debt — a number so high it now exceeds the total national credit card debt.
The backlash against higher education exceeds polling data. Graduates have begun suing colleges for their tuition money after spending postgraduate life unemployed or underemployed. Even billionaire Peter Thiel is offering a fellowship to students who will drop out of college and explore their entrepreneurial ideas.
With the overwhelming fear that many college-age voters and their parents have regarding college’s cost benefit, a man like Mr. Walker can speak honestly about life without a degree.
He attended Marquette University, but left for a full-time job before receiving a diploma. That makes him more “normal” than his detractors will admit. According to a 2011 Harvard Graduate School of Education study, just 56 percent of college students complete a four-year degree within six years.
For millions of Americans, Mr. Walker’s story is their story. His success, like that of Steve Jobs and many others, should be seen as an inspiration by proving that the mere lack of a diploma doesn’t limit one’s ability to achieve in life.
Other would-be presidential candidates may have a more difficult time relating to millennials who are in college or thinking about college today. Hillary Rodham Clinton graduated from Yale Law in 1973 when it cost just $4,150 a year. A student who attends a less-prestigious law school today can expect to pay at least 10 times as much. For example, Rutgers Law School students must pay or borrow an average of nearly $90,000 a year for the privilege of attending — and that’s on top of the cost of their undergraduate degrees.
A candidate such as Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush or Mrs. Clinton, or a media pundit hinting that Scott Walker’s lack of a college degree should disqualify him for the presidency would say more about them than about him. They might want to remember that the last president who served without such a degree was Harry Truman, who most historians suggest was a far better president than some with expensive credentials from our elite colleges and universities.
• Ryan James Girdusky is a New York-based political consultant and writer.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.