On a day to day basis most of us don’t think too much about presidential cabinets. Yet, they are important. And, they are filled with highly talented people. But how does one get to be a member of a presidential cabinet? Where do these people come from?
Perhaps being selected has something to do with one’s college alma mater. On this hunch I decided to look at Barack Obama’s and George W. Bush’s second term cabinets. Using Wikipedia (in my view, the best thing since peanut butter) I found the cabinet members and the colleges and universities they attended. This information is presented in the table below.
Now, it is likely that most people over the age of twenty four are already aware of the patterns revealed in the table data. But if you know a young person who has aspirations to be a presidential cabinet member, it might be worth his or her time to spend a couple minutes looking at this information. The data clearly reveal a relationship between cabinet membership and choice of college. To emphasize the point I have devised a short multiple choice quiz to assess the reader’s data analysis skills. So, if you are willing, please take a look at the table below and then take the quiz.
1. To improve your chances of becoming a member of a presidential cabinet, you should attend:
a. Harvard University
b. Ohio State
c. the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater
2. Assuming that you want to be a member of a presidential cabinet and you cannot go to Harvard, you should attend:
a. another Ivy League institution
b. a state land-grant institution such as Iowa State
c. your local community college
3. If you insist on attending college on the west coast of the U.S. instead of the east coast, your best bet for becoming a presidential cabinet member is to attend:
a. Stanford University
b. UCLA
c. Cal State at Fresno
Anyone who answers “a” to all three questions is potential cabinet material. If you chose any other response for whatever reason, your chances of becoming a cabinet member are seriously diminished. You may still have an interesting life, albeit not in the higher echelons of power.
| Barack Obama Cabinet | 2nd Term (2013 – Present) | |
| Member | Secretary of / Office | Alma Mater |
| John Kerry | State | Yale, Boston University |
| Joseph Jacob Lew | Treasury | CarletonCollege, Harvard, Georgetown |
| Chuck Hagel | Defense | U. of Nebraska |
| Eric Holder | Attorney General | Columbia University |
| Sally Jewell | Interior | University of Washington |
| Thomas Vilsack | Agriculture | Hamilton, New York, Albany Law |
| Penny Pritzker | Commerce | Harvard, Stanford University |
| Thomas Perez | Labor | Brown University, Harvard |
| Kathleen Sibelius | HHS | Trinity Washington University, Kansas |
| Shaun Donovan | HUD | Harvard |
| Anthony Foxx | Transportation | Davidson College, New York University |
| Ernest Moniz | Energy | Boston College, Stanford |
| Arne Duncan | Education | Harvard |
| Eric Shinseki | Veterans Affairs | West Point, Duke University |
| Janet Napolitano | Homeland Security | Santa Clara University, U. of Virginia |
| George W. Bush Cabinet | 2nd Term (2005 – 2009) | |
| Condoleezza Rice | State | University of Denver, Notre Dame |
| Henry Paulson | Treasury | Dartmouth College, Harvard Business School |
| Robert Gates | Defense | William and Mary, Indiana U., Georgetown U. |
| Alberto Gonzales | Attorney General | Rice University, Harvard Law School |
| Michael Mukasey | Attorney General | Columbia University, Yale University |
| Dirk Kempthorne | Interior | U. of Idaho, San Bernadino Valley College |
| Mike Johanns | Agriculture | St. Mary’s U., Creighton U. School of Law |
| Ed Schafer | Agriculture | University of North Dakota, University of Denver |
| Carlos Gutierrez | Commerce | Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education, Querétaro |
| Elaine Chao | Labor | Mount Holyoke College, Harvard Business School, M.I.T., Dartmouth College, Columbia University |
| Mike Leavitt | HHS | Southern Utah University |
| Alphonso Jackson | HUD | Truman State University, Washington University School of Law |
| Steve Preston | HUD. | Northwestern University, U. of Chicago Graduate School of Business |
| Mary Peters | Transportation | University of Phoenix |
| Samuel Bodman | Energy | Cornell University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Margaret Spellings | Education | University of Houston |
| Jim Nicholson | Veterans Affairs | U.S. Military Academy, Columbia University |
| James Peake | Veterans Affairs | U.S. Military Academy, Cornell University |
| Michael Chertoff | Homeland Security | Harvard University |
Snapshots 
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Thhanks for posting this
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