As near as I can tell, Scott Walker left college in his senior year in order to pursue electoral politics – and Walker has been notably successful in his chosen career. In that way, Walker is similar to businessmen who left college before graduation in order to start companies. Once they have established a record of success in their chose field, one does not usually think less of them for lacking a bachelor’s degree (quite the opposite actually).

It is unclear what more a bachelor’s degree (as such) would tell us about the Scott Walker of 2015. Perhaps there are middle-aged candidates for office for whom a bachelor’s degree might be a signal of some value. A degree might very slightly allay concerns about a candidate whose career consists of being an undistinguished legislative backbencher and whose sole attraction appears to be a talent for demagogic rhetoric. The college degree might stand in for qualities of grit and general intelligence (other than just a talent for spin) that might not be evident from their work history.

That’s not the case with Walker. Walker has been a budget balancing executive at both the county and state level. He has proposed, implemented, and defended major structural reforms against fierce, determined, and sometimes ingenious opposition. Walker has already shown far more grit and intelligence than is required to finish his degree.

That doesn’t mean that something has not been lost. College (among other experiences) can provide someone with the opportunity to see beyond the attitudes of one’s social circle. On matters of national policy, Walker’s political instincts seem to be very similar to those of Jeb Bush or Chris Christie. Their views of national issues seem to be part of the same consensus that runs from K Street in Washington, to the local Chamber of Commerce. Walker’s recent backtracking/obfuscation on immigration policy seems to have involved his realization that the immigration opinions of the local employer lobbies were not universally shared among Republican primary voters. People who are celebrating Walker’s lack of a college degree as the herald of some major change are making the same mistake as his critics. They are mistaking the form (the degree) for the substance. Walker is a capable, determined politician who has the principles and enthusiasms of the contemporary Republican establishment.

It is possible to imagine an education that would have left Walker more open to the opinions of a wider array of Americans, but it wasn’t going to happen just by grinding out a few more credits (or even going to graduate school). That kind of education (combined an openness to that kind of education) is pretty rare. Senator Tom Cotton is the only example that immediately springs to mind. One can complain that Harvard (and the Claremont Institute) helped shape Cotton’s worldview, but that would, once again, be mistaking the form (Cotton’s Harvard degrees) with the substance of Cotton’s worldview.