Wisconsin governor Scott Walker has said one of his biggest regrets was in not finishing his degree at Marquette University. As a young man, he left school in his senior year in 1990 for a job with the American Red Cross. Later that year, he got bitten by the political bug and ran unsuccessfully for the Wisconsin legislature.
“I kept thinking I’d go back, got married, had one kid, had another kid, next thing you know . . . you’re worrying more about paying for your kids’ college education than you are for your own,” Walker has said.
But now Walker wants to fill that gap in his résumé as he contemplates a possible 2016 run for president. A few party activists have expressed misgivings about supporting a candidate without a college degree. “Governor Walker would like to finish his degree through the University of Wisconsin’s FlexOption once they expand the degree offerings,” his spokesman Laurel Patrick said this week. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the Flex program:
aims to allow adults to start classes anytime, work at their own pace and earn credit for what they already have learned in school or on the job once they prove college-level competencies.
Announcing the program in 2012, Walker said that it could help a range of students like him, especially adults already in jobs, adults caring for children and soldiers deployed overseas.
It’s unlikely that Walker will be able to start the program this year. He just happens to have to win his reelection bid first — his third race for governor in four years, owing to a 2012 recall attempt. He currently leads Democratic candidate Mary Burke by about eight points.