Archived News | Return to News Center

June 15, 2011

ULM’s contribution to state delegation highlighted in national education journal

According to a recent article in the Chronicle of Education, the University of Louisiana at Monroe has produced the second highest number of state delegates who graduated from a four-year public university and who are serving in the Louisiana legislature.

According to the Chronicle reporters, ULM has produced 10 legislators currently serving in the state legislature.

At 40 legislators, only LSU, the state’s flagship university, has produced more legislators out of all Louisiana public colleges. Eighty percent, or about four out of five, of Louisiana’s legislators attended college somewhere in Louisiana.

Southern University Law Center, a post-graduate program in Baton Rouge and Loyola, a private college in New Orleans, produced 13 legislators each.

The article looks for the first time at where the approximately 7,000-plus state legislators in America went to college, or whether the representative went to college at all.

The article is featured in the June 12 edition of the journal and was among the most viewed and emailed in the Chronicle’s online edition on Monday.

Chronicle reporters Scott Smallwood and Alex Richards write, “Across the country, almost every statehouse is dominated by one alma mater. Usually it's the one you'd expect ... In Louisiana, 28 percent attended Louisiana State University. What's surprising is the sometimes much smaller share of graduates from other public institutions in the same state.”

Other University of Louisiana System schools were also represented in the legislative map, including Nichols State University, Northwestern State University, McNeese and Louisiana Tech University, and the total UL System schools combined exceeds the number of legislators coming out of LSU.

The Chronicle reviewed data from Project Vote Smart, a nonpartisan research organization, to analyze which is the least-educated and which is the most educated legislature in America, and why it may or may not matter.

The full article may be viewed at:
chronicle.com/article/How-Educated-Is-Your/127845/.

PLEASE NOTE: Some links and e-mail addresses in these archived news stories may no longer work, and some content may include events which are no longer relevent, or reference individuals and/or organizations no longer associated with ULM.