The diploma divide is reshaping American politics

I am the founder and president of an investment consulting firm in Orange County, Calif. I carry an alphabet’s worth of financial licenses after my name, plus multiple degrees.

Not one of those credentials ever taught me how to read a distressed balance sheet or catch a fraud before the regulators did. Clients hired me because I could do the job, not because I held the right degree. That distinction, competence over credential, is disappearing from American life, and the country is sorting itself by it.

Call it the diploma divide — it is now the sharpest fault line in American politics. It is sharper than race, income and region. Whether a voter holds a bachelor’s degree predicts a ballot almost as well as party registration does.

The 2024 election proved it. Pew Research Center’s validated-voter study, which checks survey responses against actual voting records, found college graduates favored Kamala Harris by 16 points, whereas voters without a degree favored President Trump by 14. Back in 2016, that non-college margin sat at 8 points for Trump. It nearly doubled in two cycles. The share of a state’s adults holding a four-year degree turned out to be one of the strongest predictors of whether that state went red or blue.

I live on both sides of that line. I graduated from Marine Corps Officer Candidate School in 1988, worked in private security, and rode in an ambulance before I ever sat in a boardroom. Most Saturdays, you will find me coaching sports for youth athletes whose parents never finished a semester of college. And no, the guys in the ambulance weren’t less capable........

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