I would never ever ever ever vote for Scott Walker. But, frankly, I could give two hoots about what kind of degrees he does or doesn't have. Not even a factor for me. Politicians can ramble on about their graduation from Harvard and their PhD in underwater basket weaving, but I could care less. You can come out of college dumb as a damn rock. Conversely, you can never step foot on a college campus and still be a well-rounded, well-educated human being.
I agree with you TK. I personally think that perceptions about higher education is allegorical in some respects. I say this because I didn't go to college until my 30s so I had experienced a fair amount of life prior to getting a degree. And prior to attending college I certainly viewed educated people, degreed people with a totally different perspective as to what their being college educated and/or being degreed even meant.
College is an institution which has a primary mission. That mission is to teach a person how to engage in the process of "self-teaching and learning" utilizing appropriate methodologies of acquiring the right information in order to achieve their respective objectives. In other words, colleges are facilitators.
What makes self-teaching/learning process so important is that no matter what course of study one pursued in college, the classes and instructions to any respective discipline of study is simply the foundation of a body of a specific academic information to be used to build on...or use that experience to expand to other disciplines.
The self-teaching/learning process will be repeatedly used through a person's life - not inside the controlled learning environment of an educational institution - but in everyday life.
A lot of people don't actually pursue a career within the academic category in which they get their degrees. Therein lies the importance of the one's ability to engage in the same personal discipline of learning and self-teaching that they had previously exerted in college in order to take on learning a new path or professional endeavor.
And higher intelligence (genius level) isn't the most common attribute one is born with. Some have it, most don't. In so many professions - those who possess higher intelligence and are able to incorporate that with common sense - is indeed a winning combination. Despite thinking to the contrary, the vast majority of people just don't understand intellect...and I'm talking more specifically higher intellect. Not only can they not understand it - they don't usually recognize it for what it is.
Of course the world is full of wanna be intellects and pseudo-intellects pretending to be intellectuals.
Now comes the "Naturals"...
But then there are those who might not have to gotten beyond the 8th grade, but possess a truly genius intellect along with oodles of common sense, creative, etc. They have the natural ability to be self-teach and learning. These are rare people.
And there are a hell of a lot of damn smart people who don't pursue higher formal education. Some get damn well off because they become the plumbers, electricians, mechanics that we pay 75.00 to 125.00 and hour to use to install or fix what the ordinary person can't.
But does all of this genius, higher intellect, common sense abilities make for good leaders?
Even those attributes don't mean that the most intellectual/commonsense/creative persons have the ability to be LEADERS.
The reality is...
Good leaders - very difficult to analyze the combinations of their intellectual abilities, their levels of common sense, even their simultaneously having extraordinary creative skills will ulitmately make for magical concoction that produces some profound excellence in inspiring others to follow and trust their ability to take them where they need to go to achieve their tasks and goals.