CollegeFinder Blog

College Education of U.S. Presidents

April 29, 2008 – 7:56 am by Nick

The 2008 presidential election made me interested in the educational pedigree of past Presidents of the United States. Analyzing the facts, I discovered eight presidents did not graduate from college, including William Harrison, Harry Truman, Zachary Taylor, Grover Cleveland, Andrew Johnson and Millard Fillmore. George W. Bush has obtained diplomas from Yale and Harvard. Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Jackson never attended law school, but their vigorous independent study enabled them to become lawyers. Eleven Presidents studied law and only one President completed medical school.

1) George Washington *College of William and Mary (surveyor’s license)

2) John Adams * Harvard College

3) Thomas Jefferson * College of William and Mary

4) James Madison *Princeton University

5) James Monroe * College of William and Mary

6) John Quincy Adams * University of Leiden (transferred to Harvard) * Harvard College

7) Andrew Jackson* None

8) Martin Van Buren* Kinderhook Academy

9) William Harrison* Hampden-Sydney College - Undergraduate (withdrew)* University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine - M.D. (withdrew)

10) John Tyler* College of William and Mary

11) James Polk* University of North Carolina (now the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)

12) Zachary Taylor* None

13) Millard Fillmore* None

14) Franklin Pierce* Bowdoin College

15) James Buchanan* Dickinson College

16) Abraham Lincoln* None

17) Andrew Johnson* None

18) Ulysses S. Grant* United States Military Academy

19) Rutherford B. Hayes* Kenyon College - Undergraduate * Harvard Law School - Law

20) James Garfield* Hiram College (transferred to Williams College)* Williams College

21) Chester A. Arthur* Union College

22) Grover Cleveland* None

23) Benjamin Harrison* Miami University (Ohio)

24) Grover Cleveland* None

25) William McKinley* Allegheny College, Albany Law School

26) Theodore Roosevelt* Harvard University - Undergraduate* Columbia Law School - Law (withdrew)

27) William Taft* Yale University - Undergraduate* University of Cincinnati Law School - Law

28) Woodrow Wilson* Davidson College (transferred to Princeton University)* Princeton University - Undergraduate* University of Virginia School of Law - Law (withdrew)* Johns Hopkins University Ph.D.

29) Warren Harding* Ohio Central College

30) Calvin Coolidge* Amherst College

31) Herbert Hoover* Stanford University

32) Franklin Roosevelt* Harvard University - Undergraduate* Columbia Law School - Law

33) Harry Truman* University of Missouri - Kansas City School of Law - Law (did not receive degree)

34) Dwight Eisenhower* United States Military Academy

35) John Kennedy* London School of Economics - Undergraduate (transferred to Princeton)* Princeton University - Undergraduate (transferred to Harvard)* Harvard University - Undergraduate* Stanford Graduate School of Business - M.B.A. (did not graduate)

36) Lyndon Johnson * Southwest Texas State Teachers College - Undergraduate* Georgetown University Law Center - Law (withdrew)

37) Richard Nixon* Whittier College - Undergraduate * Duke University School of Law - Law

38) Gerald Ford * University of Michigan - Undergraduate* Yale Law School - Law

39) Jimmy Carter * Georgia Southwestern College (transferred to Georgia Tech)* Georgia Institute of Technology (transferred to U.S. Naval Academy)* United States Naval Academy* Union College

40) Ronald Reagan* Eureka College - Economics

41) George H. W. Bush* Yale University

42) Bill Clinton* Georgetown University - Undergraduate University of Oxford - Rhodes Scholarship Yale Law School - Law

43) George W. Bush* Yale University - Undergraduate Harvard Business School - M.B.A.