Should the US implement a formal education requirement for congress?

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Well, that wouldn't be very representative of the nation now would it?

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Yes, I think it's important that the people writing our laws know what they're doing.

So only the rich can represent us?

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Yes, I think it's important that the people writing our laws know what they're doing.

So only the rich can represent us?

Are the rich the only ones who can go to college?  I missing something here.  Surely your not saying that a person can't take out a loan and go to college?

Largely, yes.  College is almost out of the question for a huge portion of the country.  You can't just go to the bank and say "I'd like $30,000 a year please" when you're an 18-year-old kid from the ghetto.  They don't know how it's done and can't build credit like that realistically.  Then they actually have to get in with an often less than stellar high school diploma behind them and somehow manage to work, commute, and live their lives at the same time.  It's verging on ignorant to suggest that they should just do it in order to live up to our standards.  Sure, they "can" go to college but it's a very difficult and often foreign life plan.

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     It costs $30,000 a year to go to college over in New Jersey? Yikes.

Uh...in the whole country?  If you're lucky.

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Right, you're lucky enough to live close, be able to commute, not have to pay your own bills, try to get in from a crap high school without SATs, venture into the process with no clue, or sustain often dangerously unstable familial and community relationships.  That's not taking into account how competitive California's public schools are, how expensive that still is, and that a college education isn't expected let alone drilled in as a definite path.

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     Well I never said that it was particularly easy to get into college or anything, & besides I vehemently oppose restrictions on who can serve in office. I heard somewhere that only 30% of adults in the United States go to college. I was mainly marvelling at what I perceived as the astronomically high cost of college in New Jersey.

Nationwide the average cost of private college is close to $30,000.  That's not really news, nor is it anywhere close to being a New Jersey thing.

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     Well I never said that it was particularly easy to get into college or anything, & besides I vehemently oppose restrictions on who can serve in office. I heard somewhere that only 30% of adults in the United States go to college. I was mainly marvelling at what I perceived as the astronomically high cost of college in New Jersey.

Nationwide the average cost of private college is close to $30,000.  That's not really news, nor is it anywhere close to being a New Jersey thing.

     Private college, sure. I suspect that most places have public community colleges that are far cheaper, though I cannot say with any certainty that that's the case.

Well yeah sure, but then there are all the other problems other than prohibitive costs (that public schools reduce, don't eliminate), that's really my only point outside the cost discussion.

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Yes, I think it's important that the people writing our laws know what they're doing.

So only the rich can represent us?

Ideally, which was the key word in my first post just as it is here, an affordable college education would be an option for all Americans.

Didn't see that.  Nice dream, but I still don't see a reason for a requirement.  And it's not like our more educated members of Congress are doing any better a job.