Open Access Graduate Research Paper
Elected officials come to office from a variety of backgrounds and experiences, and researchers have sought to discover how these characteristics affect the policy making process. There is a gap in the literature pertaining to whether educational attainment of policymakers influences education policy. This research analyzes the educational attainment of state lawmakers and whether higher levels of educational achievement influence the legislative support of public universities as measured by budget appropriations to those schools. Results show there is a statistically significant positive relationship between educational attainment of lawmakers and support of post-secondary education. Future studies should consider developing an improved measure of educational attainment as well as the inclusion of variables that represent other sources of competition for state resources such as Medicare or corrections.