A new study by a Brigham Young University professor highlights something that might seem intuitive but is still valuable to see in statistical form: state legislators in America are a highly-educated group of people.

The National Conference of State Legislatures has an overview of the data:

It turns out that 71 percent of state legislators nationwide have at least a bachelor's degree and 40 percent have an advanced degree on top of that. Given that 12 percent of the education data among state legislators is “unknown” it is impossible to know which state has the most educated legislature in the country.

However, it appears Virginia and California have the highest percentage of legislators with at least a bachelor's degree at 89 percent and 87 percent respectively.

This compares very favorably to the 95% of members of Congress with bachelor’s degrees and is nearly three times higher than the 27% of the entire adult population with such degrees.

Much more interesting, however, is the advanced degree variation between legislatures. For instance, Nebraska and Ohio have the highest percentage of state legislators with doctorates and law degrees, respectively.

NCSL has added all this data to their interactive map of legislator demographics. The tool includes a host of other data including legislator occupations, religions, ages, etc.

Across the country, the costs of higher education have been on the rise for years, and nationally, experts expect that trend to continue in 2008.

In fact, the College Board estimates that tuition at the nation’s four-year public universities will increase by an average of 6.6 percent this year.

One state which won’t ask students to pay more, however, is Maryland.

This session, the state’s legislators increased public higher-education funding by 9.7 percent, which gave the schools enough budget flexibility to offer attendees a break.