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Report: Texas Legislature has greatest percentage of lawyers

As a hub for tort reform and conservative rhetoric, Texas might be expected to have a statehouse with a demonstrable anti-attorney bias. If that’s the case, then Texas lawmakers are a self-loathing bunch. According to a new nationwide study by The Chronicle of Higher Education, Texas has the highest percentage of state legislators with a law degree.

Texas is the only place where more than 30 percent of state legislators have a law degree (30.4 percent). Rounding out the top 5 are Florida (29.4 percent), New York (29.2 percent), Virginia (28.6 percent) and Massachusetts (27.6 percent). Overall, 17.2 percent of state lawmakers in the U.S. have law degrees.

With 86.2 percent of state lawmakers having a bachelor’s degree or more, Texas ranks fifth overall in the country, behind California (89.9 percent), Virginia (88.6 percent), Nebraska (87.3 percent) and New York (86.8 percent). Overall, 74.7 percent of state lawmakers in the U.S. have a bachelor’s degree or more.

By comparison, about 25 percent of Texans have a bachelor’s degree or higher, and 46 percent did not attend college at all. Read More

Students looking to venture beyond their home state to pursue a college education might consider public schools to get a discount on tuition. While many students could benefit financially from looking at colleges near home, there are schools that offer competitive out-of-state tuition packages that rival many universities’ in-state offerings.

Among the 452 public institutions that reported tuition and fees data to U.S. News in a 2010 survey of undergraduate programs, the average for out-of-state students was $16,678 for the 2010-11 school year. (Additionally, 121 public colleges surveyed did not report tuition data.) By comparison, the 10 least expensive public colleges for out-of-state students cost an average of $6,643—more than $10,000 less than the national average.

New Mexico Highlands University, a regional university in the West, offered the cheapest tuition and fees package for out-of-state students with a cost of $4,632 for the 2010-11 school year. The university also had the distinction of offering the least expensive tuition and fees package for its in-state residents.

Of the top 10 least expensive public schools for out-of-state students, eight are located among Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota, and five of the top 10 are ranked in U.S. News‘s rankings of Best Colleges. The five military academies, which charge $0 in tuition and $0 in fees in return for postgraduate service, were excluded from this tuition list, as were schools designated as Unranked by U.S. News. Read More