Higher education and effectiveness of the U.S. Congress

The key contribution of the paper is an empirical evaluation of whether the educational level of U.S. Congress is a good proxy to measure their performance. In particular, I will try to answer the following questions:

1. Does higher education make an elected official a competent one? Do individuals with higher education perform better when elected to the office, compared to the elected individuals without a formal education?

2. Does the individual's degree matter for success while in the office? For example, will an individual with a law or political science degree be more successful in office than an individual with a medical or mathematics degree?

These simple questions have not been fully addressed yet. While education is commonly used as one measure to assert the competence of elected officials, there are almost no studies that show a positive connection between the two. A recent study by Carnes and Lupu (2015) shows that performance of elected leaders with college degrees is about the same as their performance without one. These results are not that surprising given that only about 5% of Congress members do not have college education. Carnes and Lupu (2015) do not investigate whether there is any difference in terms of efficiency between members of Congress with graduate and undergraduate degrees, or whether field of study matters for their performance. The goal of my paper is to fill that gap.

My main data source is GovTrack.us. Collected data includes all bios for members of Congress, and information on what bills they sponsored/cosponsored and whether they became a law. The panel data were analyzed using standard regression analysis. My first hypothesis is to show that higher education improves legislative efficiency. I expect the coefficient on higher education to be significant and positive. My second hypothesis is to test whether a specific degree of education is more relevant for legislative efficiency than other degrees. I use the number of bills sponsored/cosponsored and the number of those bills that become law for efficiency. I use legislative efficiency measure created by Volden and Wiseman (2014). At least two policy implications will ensue from the paper. First, education of potential lawmakers can be an important factor for voters as an indication of a likely success after the election. Second, candidates can use their education credentials to make a pitch to voters on who would be a more efficient leader after the election.