Certain colleges appear better than others in creating high-paid congressional staff.
The schools producing undergraduates that make the most as congressional staff are the U.S. Naval Academy, Brandeis University, Columbia University, Princeton University and Dartmouth College, according to a LegiStorm analysis of the annual salary rates for current full-time and permanent congressional staff. This analysis finds that the University of Arizona, Tufts University, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Catholic University of America and Princeton University produce graduate students who become the best-paid staff.
The median salaries of the top five best-paid undergraduate schools, or $110,000, greatly exceed the average annual salary of congressional staffers with a bachelor's degree, $71,000.
Similarly, the $129,000 median salaries of the top five best-paid graduate schools exceed the average annual salary for congressional staffers who hold a JD - the highest-paying graduate degree among staffers - by $28,000.
With an average annual salary of $110,000 for JD-holders, GOP offices are willing to pay staffers with a JD more than the congressional average. However, the median salaries of each of the five best-paid graduate schools exceed this figure by over $13,000. The top-paying graduate school, predominantly attended by Democratic alumni, surpasses the average salary of a GOP staffer with a JD by $46,000.
Only 10% of staffers who have attended a top five best-paid undergraduate school are employed by Republican offices, with the remainder working for Democrats.
The partisan divide in attending the top graduate schools is less striking. However, Democratic alumni from these institutions still exceed GOP alumni, making up nearly 68% of current congressional staffers who have attended one of these schools or a school within its system.
The number of Republican graduates who have attended a top five best-paid undergraduate school only surpasses the number of Democratic graduates from one school: the U.S. Naval Academy. This is also the case for the top five best-paid graduate schools, with the number of Republican graduates only surpassing the number of Democratic graduates from the Catholic University of America.
