A surprising number of presidents never graduated college

[Free Vulcan]

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/a-surprising-number-of-presidents-never-graduated-college/article/2560256

Media and potential opponents are scandalized that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is considering a run for president even though he didn’t graduate from college. But if Walker (who dropped out of Marquette University in his senior year) won in 2016, he would be joining an exalted group that includes the two presidents most frequently named as the favorites of the American people.

Eleven presidents — exactly 25 percent — were not college graduates. Most prominent on that list are George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, who make up half of Mt. Rushmore’s foursome and are in the top three or top five in virtually every popular survey of favorite presidents. (A 2007 Rasmussen poll put Honest Abe and the Father of Our Country at number two and number one, respectively.) The most recent president to forego the benefits of a sheepskin was Harry Truman, and the list includes other fondly remembered (and a few barely remembered) chief executives.

Meet the presidents who dropped out or didn’t make it to college at all:


George Washington

By the time he was 22, the future commander of the Continental Army and first president under the Constitution had been appointed surveyor of Culpeper County, begun an extremely successful career in farming and land acquisition, been appointed a major in the Virginia Colony’s army, and arguably caused the French and Indian War with a disastrous expedition into the western frontier.

Andrew Jackson

Old Hickory lost his entire family in the Revolution and had a very tough childhood. But the future seventh president managed to build up a thriving law practice and acquire a large chunk of land in North Carolina — all before his school-age years had ended. He also scandalized local society by moving in with a woman who had not yet divorced her husband.

Martin Van Buren

The first president born a United States citizen, Van Buren left school at 14, but he got an early start on law and politics. At 21, Van Buren was admitted to the bar in New York State. He became a key player in the Democratic-Republican Party and, eventually, America’s eighth president.

William Henry Harrison

Following Van Buren into the Oval Office, Harrison ended a three-president run of no-diploma presidents by dying of pneumonia just a month into his term. Deprived of a higher education when his father’s death left him without funds, Harrison joined the army. His victory at the Battle of the Thames was one of a handful of American victories in the War of 1812.

Zachary Taylor

Before he became known as “Old Rough and Ready,” the 12th president was young, rough and unschooled. Biographer K. Jack Bauer called Taylor’s handwriting “that of a near-illiterate.” A national favorite after his success in the Mexican War, Taylor died after a little more than a year in the White House and was succeeded by another non-graduate, Millard Fillmore.

Millard Fillmore

The son of a New York farmer, Fillmore appears to have made efforts at completing a formal education, but he spent his school-age years serving a variety of apprenticeships and studying law. An anti-slavery moderate, Fillmore nevertheless signed the Fugitive Slave Act, a decision that usually lands him at the bottom of presidential rankings. He was the last Whig president before that party collapsed and reformed into the abolitionist Republican Party that still exists today.

Abraham Lincoln

The first Republican president was famously born in a one-room log cabin in Hardin County, Kentucky. During a hardscrabble youth on the frontier, Lincoln received less than a year of formal education, but he was a committed autodidact noted for his wide reading and the very fluent writing style that eventually produced the Second Inaugural speech, the Gettysburg Address, and other classics of political literature.

Andrew Johnson

Tennessee Johnson was apprenticed to a tailor at the age of ten. He ran away a few years later, but not before getting a few lessons in basic literacy. That education was enough for Johnson to become vice president and, upon Lincoln’s assassination, to make it into the White House (where he promptly became the first president to be impeached).

Grover Cleveland

Cleveland was the only president to serve two non-consecutive terms, one of just two to win the popular vote three times, and the record-holder for most presidential vetoes before being passed by Franklin Roosevelt nearly 50 years later. But he wasn’t a college graduate, having quit school at 16 to support his family after his father died.

William McKinley

The 25th president finished regular school at 16, but dropped out of Allegheny College after a year. He enlisted in the Union Army as a private, and by the time his college-age years were over, he had fought throughout the entire Civil War and received a commission as an officer.

Harry S. Truman

Truman went to work for the Santa Fe railroad after graduating high school. He left a Kansas City business school after one semester and later tried law school night classes but dropped out. One of the 33rd president’s actions was the signing of the Veterans Adjustment Act of 1952, which greatly extended the G.I. Bill’s tuition and other education benefits. To date, Truman is the last president not to have graduated from college.