Talk:List of presidents of the United States by education

Untitled
It should really be the president first, then the institution. The institution should be linked too. --Jiang 01:52, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)


 * If you want to do that, go ahead, but make it a separate section of the page, don't just delete all that's there. The way it's organized now you can see that Harvard had five Presidential grads, Princeton had two-and-a-half. Thanks. jengod 02:03, Feb 6, 2004 (UTC)

John Quincy Adams
Did JQA get a degree from University of Leiden? If we are including colleges attended then there will be at least a few more to add. Bkonrad | Talk


 * The John Quincy Adams article says that he was there during the American Revolution, which ended when he was about sixteen, four years before he graduated from Harvard. Thus, I would assume that his education at Leiden was informal, at least far from a college education.  &mdash;Mark Adler (markles)  00:59, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Dropped Out
I recommend changing "dropped out" to "withdrew" and "flunked out" to "academically expelled" on the grounds that they sound much more encyclopedic. Captain Jackson 22:13, 10 January 2006 (UTC)


 * And more NPOV! Change them, if you like.  &mdash;Mark Adler (markles)  00:59, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Re-order by frequency?
I propose that we slightly adjust the listing order, to list those institutions which have sent multiple grads to the presidency, and perhaps giving preference to those who actually graduated (e.g. in the law school section Yale with its two graduates would trump Columbia with two less-than graduates). Within levels alphabetical would be used. Is there consensus for this change? Since there doesn't seem to be much traffic here, I'm going to bold and make the change unilaterally unless anyone objects within the next 72 hours. --YbborTalk 01:47, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Add undergraduate degrees recieved?
Don't know how one would go about doin something to it, but it seems it'd be worth adding what they got their degrees in. W. Bush in History, Clinton in Government, etc. MRig (talk) 17:21, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

I agree that their Majors should be listed. I can't find a combined list of that information anywhere. Kikster 18:52, 11 December 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Nicholettesams (talk • contribs)

Law Schools and "Doctorate"
So, apparently, there is a move to place those presidents who received JD's as "doctorates." While the Juris Doctor is certainly a "doctorate" in some sense, my main objection to this is that it draws a false distinction between Presidents who received LLBs and JDs when the degrees are, functionally, interchangeable. May I propose that the second "Doctorate" section to a "Law School" section and include all the Presidents with post-graduate law degrees? JEB90 (talk) 18:55, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Bill Clinton
Cill Clinton did not graduate from Oxford. He dropped out.

JFK
John F. Kennedy briefly audited at Stanford. He never officially registed there.

Both of these might be true. Please find a source.Ratemonth (talk) 17:20, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

http://news.stanford.edu/thedish/?p=9011 According to Stanford Newspaper. JFG briefly audited at Stanford. JFK never registered as a official student. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Zxcvqwer12 (talk • contribs) 20:10, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

JFK also visited University of Michigan http://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=about.history.speech — Preceding unsigned comment added by Zxcvqwer12 (talk • contribs) 20:13, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Subjects studied
I've made the following list of what later presidents studied, based on their Wikipedia articles. Some of the articles aren't very clear. I'm not sure the best way to incorporate it into the article, and we might need to do the earlier presidents too:

--Colapeninsula (talk) 09:43, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Obama - political science; law
 * Bush II - history; Master of Business Administration
 * Clinton - Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service (diplomacy); PPE (unfinished); law
 * Bush I - economics
 * Reagan - economics and sociology
 * Carter - The U.S. Naval Academy, where ALL midshipmen study calculus, chemistry, and physics, and some mechanical engineering and electrical engineering before moving on to a chosen major subject. Carter's major subject was naval engineering and then on-the job, he went into nuclear engineering under Admiral Hyman G. Rickover
 * Ford - economics; law
 * Nixon - Whittier College - a liberal arts college with pre-law; and then law at Duke University
 * LBJ - schoolteacher training
 * JFK - politics
 * Eisenhower - The U.S. Military Academy, where ALL cadets study calculus, chemistry, and phyics, and then the basics of civil engineering and mechanical engineering before moving on to their chosen major subjects, including various kinds of engineerimg
 * Truman
 * FDR - economics
 * Hoover - geology and mining engineering
 * Coolidge - ?(unclear)
 * Harding - medicine
 * Wilson - various included history and politics; dropped out of law school
 * Taft - unknown at Yale; law
 * Theodore Roosevelt - "science, philosophy and rhetoric courses but fared poorly in Latin and Greek", "an accomplished naturalist and published ornithologist"
 * McKinley - briefly at Allegheny; law school
 * Harrison - farming; at Miami included history, politics
 * Cleveland - no college
 * Arthur - classical curriculum
 * Garfield - various, including Greek, Latin (which he later taught)
 * Hayes - Latin and Greek

No Master's degrees?
Not one president got an M.A. or M.S.? Not even Wilson on the way to his Ph.D.? If so, it might be good to state that explicitly, because otherwise it kind of looks like we just forgot about it. (Unfortunately it seems a little unlikely to find a reliable secondary source saying exactly "no president of the U.S. has ever earned a master's degree.) --Trovatore (talk) 10:53, 28 October 2011 (UTC)


 * George W. Bush has earned a Master of Business Administration degree after he earned his B.A. at Yale.
 * Also, it is not always a necessity to earn an M.A. or an M.S. before going on to a Ph.D. Graduate programs leading from the bachelor's to the doctorate are quite common. Also, sometimes when a Ph.D. student is unable to complete original research, he/she is commonly given a master's degree as he/she is being booted out the door. The latter is common in fields like mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, botany, zoology, and astronomy.
 * In astronomy, the awarding of an M.S. as a direct goal is uncommon. One school that does this is the University of Maryland, which serves a lot of students from the Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA Headquarters, the U.S. Air Force, etc. As a career enhancement, U.Md. has students in graduate school in astronomy who are engineers, mathematicans, physicists, etc. These are people who have worked on the Hubble Space Telescope, Skylab, the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE), the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, the new James Webb Space Telescope, etc., which are all NASA astronomical projects.
 * I am an electronics engineer, and if I had been working on one of those projects, I surely would have wanted to earn an M.S. in astronomy. 98.67.167.111 (talk) 01:17, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Check John Adams and John Quincy Adams, they both received Master’s degrees from Harvard in the 18th century. But oddly, I couldn’t find any other president with Master’s degrees 15amoryblaine (talk) 01:38, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

Other kinds of degrees - and be more specific
This article repeatedly states who had or did not have a "degree". Well, you need to be more specific, especially since there is a degree, the associate's degree, that is lower than a bachelor's degree. An associate's degree is designed to be a two-year degree, and they are quite common now. Many registered nurses have an associate's degree, for example, and NOT a bachelor's degree in nursing, which is much more rigorous. I even knew of a person who had earned three associate's degrees but no bachelor's degree at all. (I think that she was a malingerer concerning the hard junior and senior level courses.) Also, there are fields such as architecture and pharmacy where at many schools the bachelor's degree does not exist. The first professional degree that is awarded is the master's degree, and that is only awarded after five or six years of study. The bachelor's degree in pharmacy is just about dead now in countries like the United States, Canada, and France. Also, see the six-year degree in architecture at the Georgia Institute of Technology and many other schools, which is a master's degree. 98.67.167.111 (talk) 01:47, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

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George Washington's surveyor's certificate does not constitute attending William & Mary
Washington never attended any kind of classes at The College of William & Mary. The College issued him a surveyor's certificate and that is all (please see 2nd paragraph in this article from the National Archives) which states Washington
 * "...did not study at the college to qualify for the commission or stand any examination by the president and masters of the school. There is no evidence, in fact, that GW went to Williamsburg in the spring or summer of 1749."

Therefore, I am removing the erroneous & unsourced claims that Washington attended Wm & Mary. Shearonink (talk) 05:15, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Hoover
Hoover is listed as having not attended high school (or equivalent), but he did in fact attend (but later dropped out of) the Friends Pacific Academy, which eventually became George Fox University. Doesn't that count as high school equivalent? Or maybe as college education? And if so, shouldn't it be included? NoMoreHeroes (talk) 14:41, 22 July 2017 (UTC)


 * Herbert Hoover, by Amy Ruth. In pages 15-16, the impression I get is that Hoover didn't take high school-level courses when he attended Friends. One sentence reads "Instead of attending high school, Bert was employed as an office boy..."


 * What's your take?


 * Billmckern (talk) 15:30, 22 July 2017 (UTC)
 * I think you're right. From the source, it seems to me Friends was not a secondary school at the time, probably a middle school equivalent. NoMoreHeroes (talk) 00:28, 23 July 2017 (UTC)

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Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:List of Vice Presidents of the United States which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 23:02, 21 May 2018 (UTC)

Rediculous Bias
Someone explain to me how Biden who isn't even a President yet because a) the electoral college hasn't even met yet much less b) he hasn't been sworn in is allowed to be listed with presidents. I thought Wikipedia wasn't supposed to have bias? Or is it allowed when it matches the hivemind here? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.186.18.58 (talk) 04:04, 12 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Just so this is also mentioned in the talk page, we use WP:RS and dramatic removals need to have consensus.
 * Reliable source? Um, look at a calendar. Its not January, 2021 therefore he hasn't been sworn in therefore he's not a president therefore he shouldn't be on the page YET. QED.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.186.18.176 (talk) 12:50, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

I know the liberals are desperate to get Biden on this page
But technically, he's not the president elect either. Until Trump concedes or the electoral college meets, he's not the president elect. Regardless, this page is for PRESIDENTS not presidents and president-elects. I know it hurts that you can't put him on here yet, but you'll just have to wait until January 2021, like it or not, if you want the page to be factually and topically correct. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.186.18.176 (talk) 12:53, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

Double Standards on Wikipedia? Quelle Suprise!
Imma leave this right here about Trump being added before he was, or even during, his time as a president elect. But no, no double standards here! " 18:57, 19 December 2016‎ Shearonink talk contribs‎ 23,998 bytes +11‎ Reverted to revision 755709948 by 2604:6000:1004:409A:258A:7CC0:A306:9AF6: Trump isn't President yet, he is still the President-Elect, please abide by the justified hidden comment. (TW)" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.186.18.176 (talk)

Wilson’s Master’s Degree
I couldn’t find any source that Wilson obtained a Master’s degree at Johns Hopkins before being granted his doctorate. Johns Hopkins didn’t start granting M.A. degrees until around 1900, almost 15 years after Wilson graduated. 15amoryblaine (talk) 10:30, 28 January 2022 (UTC)