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While researching an answer for another question, I discovered that the constitution of Azerbaijan requires a presidential candidate to have a university degree. This seemed unique to me.

What other national elected offices require a certain level of education?

Within this question I am interested in elected offices, but not those specific to technical professions. For example, if a city somewhere elects their building inspector I am not interested (because it is obviously a requirement of their profession).

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    Do you count judges, attorney generals, etc. as "technical professions?"
    – cpast
    Aug 18, 2016 at 16:45
  • I hadn't thought of them, but I am open to that as an answer. Aug 18, 2016 at 18:36
  • I think that is very broad. There are many countries in the world, almost all of them have various degrees of elected public offices. Would you consider narrowing down a little? Aug 25, 2016 at 6:56
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    Kind of related to certain fictional countries that require military service to be a citizen.
    – user9790
    Jul 11, 2018 at 17:12
  • 2
    The fact that someone hasn't come up with an answer doesn't mean that it is too broad.
    – ohwilleke
    Jul 11, 2018 at 17:13

1 Answer 1

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I'm aware of a couple of other examples of countries which have written into their constitution explicit education requirements governing the eligibility of presidential candidates; Turkey & the Philippines. Turkey requires candidates to have completed higher education, while the Philippines has a slightly lower barrier of requiring candidates to be literate.

In addition, the Algerian Parliament amended their election law in September 2019, introducing the "requirement for presidential candidates to have university degrees".

Article 101 of the Constitution of the Republic of Turkey:

The President of the Republic shall be elected directly by the public from among Turkish citizens over forty years of age who are eligible to be a deputy and have completed higher education.

Article VII, Section 2 of the Constitution of the Republic of the Philippines:

No person may be elected President unless he is a natural-born citizen of the Philippines, a registered voter, able to read and write, at least forty years of age on the day of the election, and a resident of the Philippines for at least ten years immediately preceding such election.

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    +1 for "slightly lower". As someone with a graduate degree, I can confirm the barrier is only "slightly".
    – Ertai87
    Sep 2, 2020 at 19:16

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