Everyone is speakme approximately, or at least Googling, Marianne Williamson, her new age policies, her how-to e-book empire, and her secretive own family existence. If she became president, there would be more than a few historic firsts—the first woman president, the first Jewish president, the first unmarried president for 100 years—but such a beginnings stands proud as being an ability disadvantage. Namely, Marianne Williamson did now not graduate from college. In this, she stands wildly aside from each previous US president, who all both finished at least a university degree or served inside the army —Williams dropped out of a selective liberal arts university after most effective two years to pursue her goals as a singer.
The best President without an undergraduate diploma in the last a hundred years become Harry S. Truman, who have become President in 1945 after the death of FDR. He by no means went to college—rather, he enlisted inside the navy and fought in World War I. Nine different presidents served inside the navy in place of attending college—generally in the Revolutionary War and Civil War eras. Every different president completed as a minimum a 4-yr university degree (, Martin Van Buren and Grover Cleveland, did now not attend college but “read the law” to grow to be lawyers, which I counted as equal to college and regulation faculty). So Williamson will be the first President to have neither a university-degree education nor a navy heritage.
That being stated, do you need to have graduated from a 4-12 months university to be president? Of course, no longer—the handiest requirement is being a natural-born US citizen above 35 years old. And I can well know that, because the founding father of a university admissions consulting corporation, I’m heavily biased towards touting the blessings of a four-year college education—so I’m selecting no longer to speak in this article about the advantages it can have. After all, it’s sincerely feasible to make it thru 4 years of an Ivy League university training without being prepared to be president. Still, I’d be remiss to now not mention that Pomona College is one of the excellent colleges within the united states of America (in 2015 it was ranked the satisfactory, above each Ivy), and that higher colleges are absolutely less difficult to graduate from, not more difficult (after you get in). Pomona offers complete need-primarily based aid, and ninety-three % of students graduate within six years (plenty higher than the average college, which has a 59% six-year commencement charge).
But this isn’t about the cost of a university schooling. Regardless of whether or not she could have been better-educated or higher-organized after four years at Pomona, her choice to drop out is troubling. Williamson’s state of affairs is markedly specific from our former presidents or most people of Americans with partial college educations. She didn’t drop out of college to sign up for the military or due to the fact she may want to now not come up with the money for it—she dropped out due to the fact she “had hassle finding her ardor” and desired to pursue a profession as a cabaret singer. Although Williamson is older now, we do bear in mind what candidates and presidents were like as youngsters when comparing their individual, and what I’m searching out in our subsequent president is someone with the grit, stamina and stick-to-it-iveness to commit to doing his or her first-rate for the full four years, now not leaving halfway through to try out something greater interesting.
