Palestinian Parliament ends impasse and backs new Cabinet - Lebanon Daily Star

Plain speaking:

The Palestinian Parliament approved on Thursday a Cabinet of mostly new faces unassociated with the corruption-plagued era of Yasser Arafat, signaling a commitment to reforms viewed as key to peacemaking.

Later, we read:

Virtually all the new ministers are experts in the field they are to oversee, including 10 with doctorates, a medical doctor, a lawyer, several engineers and several with master's degrees. The new agriculture minister, Walid Abed Rabbo, has a doctorate in human resource management from the U.S. and served in Jordan's agriculture ministry before becoming a consultant to the Palestinian Agriculture Ministry.

A friend tells me that ministers in the Middle East typically are highly educated experts in their fields - indeed, that this it is true throughout positions of management in government. But high education is neither necessary nor sufficient for good government, and can be used as window dressing.

The number of U.S. cabinet secretaries with the PhD is quite small. Condi Rice is the exception.

By the way, a relatively proportion of the Palestinian population is highly educated. People respond to incentives. When it is uncertain what your home will be you will tend to invest in mobile capital, like human capital. It gives the individual a low cost means of escape.