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TBH, I think a lot of animosity toward recent students who are benefiting from loan forgiveness comes from older college-educated people who paid off their students loans themselves through their own work. However, I can certainly see why non-college educated people resent paying for someone else's college education, especially since their tax dollars are already paying for K-12.
The animosity, as mentioned, has been there for decades, maybe the reasons just have changed.
It was there fifty years ago when I worked in a factory and went to college and then came back. One of the games played was to give you a task impossible to complete. Another was to have you do something with instructions you followed to the letter but was still determined to be wrong (kind of like the early inspections in OCS). The comment was then made, "College boy don't how to work".
Recent media reports of government proposed student loan debt forgiveness in my opinion seem to have unleashed a lot of antipathy toward college educated people collectively.
When I have written persuasive letters in the past quoting professors and subject matter experts with higher education degrees, those with no college education would sometimes respond with a "What do they know?" attitude" or "I don't need a professor" to tell me what to think" remark.
Has there for many years been an underlying antipathy toward the college educated from the non-college educated that was aggravated by the recently announced debt forgiveness plan?
It doesn't sound like your letters were very persuasive. I don't know what you were writing about, but given the poor replication in research studies in some fields (e.g., psychology), pervasiveness of junk science in others (e.g., nutrition), and disciplines like grievance studies (remember the hoax papers by Pluckrose et al that made it to publication?), maybe the responders had a point.
Unless you're talking about a small town or circle of friends where everybody knows each other's business, or your occupation obviously requires a degree, how would anyone know whether you went to college?
It doesn't sound like your letters were very persuasive. I don't know what you were writing about, but given the poor replication in research studies in some fields (e.g., psychology), pervasiveness of junk science in others (e.g., nutrition), and disciplines like grievance studies (remember the hoax papers by Pluckrose et al that made it to publication?), maybe the responders had a point.
Unless you're talking about a small town or circle of friends where everybody knows each other's business, or your occupation obviously requires a degree, how would anyone know whether you went to college?
Reasonably intelligent people would find it difficult to question the veracity of an actuary or Certified Public Accountant's professional opinion.
Reasonably intelligent people would find it difficult to question the veracity of an actuary or Certified Public Accountant's professional opinion.
Why do you care? That's not a rhetorical question, either.
Do you need to persuade dumb people to see your point of view, because they are on a government commission that has the power to grant or deny you a license or a variance? Or are these family members that are interfering with personal matters?
If these non-educated people have actual power over you, then I can see why you'd be concerned. Otherwise if you're just irritated by dumb people not listening to you, I'd say get over it and move on.
Consider your surroundings. Full-time workers, especially in a labor-class environment, don't want to hear from some part-time college kid how he's just biding time there until he can get out and move on to bigger and better things while the full-timers stick around for life.
I've been in that situation; the Parks Department was a good job to hold me over while I finished my degree, but as happy as some coworkers were for me to improve myself and put my talents to better use, there was surely some resentment that I was "getting out." As an aside, that particular job was heavily loaded with political patronage, and I think there was at least some level of self-awareness among the favored staff that although they were in charge, the college kids did know more than some of them, or could point out areas of inefficiency and waste, which in turn could put those supervisors in an unfavorable position when the big bosses wanted a scapegoat for something... or there was simply jealousy that some of us may move on to an existence where we didn't have to play the political game to advance.
This isn't to take away from skilled labor. I worked with a lot of guys who taught me tricks and procedures learned from years of field work, and that knowledge was invaluable later in life.
Reasonably intelligent people would find it difficult to question the veracity of an actuary or Certified Public Accountant's professional opinion.
Were your letters citing CPAs or actuaries as experts on a matter in their line of work? Are YOU the actuary or CPA? I'm curious what these letters were about.
I work for CPAs and would tend to believe their professional opinion on a matter they specialize in--not just because they went to college, but because of their real-world experience, continuing education, professional liability, and IME, because they carefully look at the facts of a matter before offering an opinion. I think most people, college educated or not, feel the same way. If someone doesn't, I'd hazard a guess that there's more going on than resentment against someone who spent four years getting an accounting degree.
There has always been bad blood between those with and without college eductions. That existed when I graduate college in 1980.
It runs the gamut. Blue collar workers may be jealous or feel like they are made to feel inferior, so they would mock college grads. Many college grads had supriority complexes and treated high school grads like an ignorant underclass.
This is not new. It may well be worse now, but not new. Certainly, giving a bunch of people free money they don't deserve and should not have, always leads to animosity from the people not getting any, especially from those footing the bill and not getting anything in return.
But this is not new. I would just call this "the latest round".
I can tell you that there was a point in my life when I was very jealous of blue collar workers.
After 6 years of college and 2 more applying for jobs during the Reagan recession, I finally got an engineering job and was sent to a construction site to oversee the work.
The Foreman was younger than me and already owned his own home after 6 years collecting union wages. Meanwhile, the entire time he was making money, I was destitute and paying for college.
I was plenty jealous at the time.
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