Half of Congress's ten most-educated staff rosters belong to freshman members. Of those with the ten lowest education levels, three are freshman offices.
While the top spot belongs to veteran Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), whose staff boasts at least seven masters degrees and two Harvard law degrees, the next most-educated office belongs to freshman Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.), whose small staff has at least five masters degrees and one law degree.
The other ten best-educated offices, on average, belong to freshman Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Jesús García (D-Ill.), Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) and Mikie Sherrill (D-N.J.), as well as Reps. Ted Deutch (D-Fla.), Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) and Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Calif.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). Freshmen make up about 23 percent of all current member offices.
But not all of the freshman class prioritized education levels in their hiring decisions, instead emphasizing military service and other life and career experiences and training. Three freshman members — Reps. Pete Stauber (R-Minn.), Mark Green (R-Tenn.) and Lance Gooden (R-Texas) — make up the staff lists with some of the lowest average education levels.
To measure education levels, LegiStorm gives a score to each office based on educational level attained and quality of the school attended. For educational level, PhDs count more than master’s degrees, which in turn count more than bachelor’s degrees, for example. For school quality, LegiStorm used the U.S. News and World Report rankings, with bonus points going to students who attended a top 100, top 50 or top 10 school.
LegiStorm's education-analysis tool compares only publicly available formal education records and may be skewed by a number of factors, including the proportion of entry-level versus senior-level staff, geographic distribution of high-ranked schools, and whether staffers choose to make their up-to-date education information publicly available.
