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The first time I fell in love with a college was via a promotional video. Yale was one of a handful of U.S. schools to send an admissions representative to my Toronto high school. As I recall, she spoke for about a minute before plugging “A Time for Learning” into the VCR. First an introductory montage of the gothic parkland campus, then a student saying “no way you could be bored here,” then smash cut to a hundred different activities. This bored Canadian kid was hooked.
In retrospect, many scenes in the video were obviously staged. Like the female student hanging out with her friends who turns to the camera to address a major student complaint at the time: “Don’t believe the hype. Everybody complains about the food. But at the end of every semester, everyone is 10 lbs. heavier and heading for the gym. Doesn’t seem like the food was that bad after all, now does it?” Or a student voiceover addressing another objection: Yale’s location in a city with a reputation for a tad too much gun violence. “The best thing about New Haven is it really teaches you to have the qualities of citizenship which I think are important. But you can't just sit in your room and expect it to all come to you.” Re-watching the video with roommates a few years later, the same thing crossed our minds: thank goodness it hasn’t come to us.
Perhaps the most puzzling segment was a male student in an ugly sweater sitting amongst friends, speaking to the camera in a confessional tone: “It's a myth that Midwesterners get worse treatment, 'cause I'm from Milwaukee, and I'm practically a celebrity here,” followed by five seconds of forced laughter. Having never been to Connecticut, Milwaukee, or the Midwest, I didn’t understand why he would say it, or why it was funny. But I think I understand it now. In Zoom meeting after Zoom meeting, whenever it comes up that I’m from Canada, someone pipes up to the effect of: “You’re so lucky. You have an insurance policy.” And while insurance isn't quite the same as celebrity, it's the kind of excitement that sets Canadian hearts racing.
How did we get to a place where, if one side wins the election, half the country wants to leave for Canada, and if the other side wins, the other half… Well, we’ll find out in 11 days, but my guess is the other half is more like 30%. And they really don’t have anywhere to go. So it’s more like hunkering down, with guns. Let’s call it gunkering down.
Whatever the outcome on Tuesday, one thing is certain: 30-50% of the country will feel aggrieved, which will frustrate the major changes necessary to get us out of the mess we're in. Political polarization is beyond the pale (or pole). Much of this can be laid at the feet of demagogues on the right and their preferred popular media outlets, Fox News and talk radio. What enthralls their audience is resentment of elites and the associated aggressive impulse to fight back and “own the libs.” Rumors are circulating on social media that a secret network of elites plans to destroy ballots for President Trump, and that an elite cabal will block Trump voters from accessing polls. 39% of Fox News viewers say QAnon – a conspiracy theory that liberal elites are kidnapping children and keeping them in hidden prisons in order to extract a life-extending substance from their blood – is good for the country. It goes without saying that this audience is increasingly disregarding its economic interest in order to vote against perceived elitism and elites and the institutions they “control”: government, media, and higher education.
America is divided by race, gender, and geography. None of that is new. What’s new is division by education: a college divide. In the 2016 election, white voters without a college degree voted Republican by a margin of 66% to 29% – a yawning 37% gap that opened after the Great Recession. In 2012, white men in Wisconsin without college degrees were just 5% more likely to be Republicans than Democrats. Today it's 23%. The college divide is so pronounced that failure to weight state polls by education is the reason pundits failed to predict Trump’s victory in 2016.
One element of the college divide is hostility to higher education itself; the percentage of self-identified Republicans who say higher education has a negative effect on the country went from 37% in 2015 to 59% in 2019. This has less to do with what’s happening on campus (or rather, what conservative media outlets enjoy reporting on i.e., affirmative action, free speech, trigger warnings) than the nature of college today. College graduates are being painted as elites principally because the vast majority of students who successfully complete 4+ years of college at the vast majority of institutions have the financial resources, family stability and support that are characteristic of top quartile (if not top decile) households. Make no mistake: every college and university in the country aims to serve students from lower quartiles and no institution intentionally promotes elitism. But only a precious few do a good job at graduating needy students into good jobs without debilitating student loan debt.
Sadly, some of the hostility is deserved. In his new book The Tyranny of Merit, Michael Sandel (unfortunately for his argument, a professor at Harvard) points out that “those who landed on top came to believe that their success was their own doing, the measure of their merit – and by implication that those left behind had no one to blame but themselves.” And the foundation of “meritocratic hubris” are degrees earned at colleges and universities, and the “honor, recognition, and prestige” they signify. The result is college supremacy: “the last acceptable prejudice.”
Just as white collar workers look down their noses at talk radio, college supremacists do the same to Americans without the right credential. Prejudice against non-college grads is omnipresent in our work lives, hiring patterns, promotion decisions, and social interactions. Non-college grads experience this prejudice and their legitimate grievances are amplified by conservative media.
Moving America forward after four years of conservative media’s monstrous creation will require a marked decline in polarization, which now means closing the education divide. With nearly 60% of conservatives holding the institution of college (in its current form) in low esteem – and with free college proposals doing nothing to provide funds for living expenses, or to strengthen the family stability and support required to complete a challenging 4+ year journey – free college is as likely to increase polarization (another expensive liberal program) as mitigate it. So strange as it sounds, America’s colleges and universities must join the fight against college supremacy.
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There’s no single path to ending college supremacy. But as higher education leaders and trustees survey the Divided States of America on November 4, here’s a checklist of actions to combat elitism and political polarization and ensure their institutions are part of a solution, not part of the problem.
Admissions
Affordability
Programs
Employability
Institution