War on Universities, Lawyers & Expertise

[gtyellowjacket]

You sure about those numbers? The differences here look starker than that:

Wide divide between voters with and without college degrees continues to be a major factor in Trump-era elections

www.pewresearch.org

Also I think it's entirely fair to say that MAGA has a general disdain for higher education, no matter how you want to frame it. The whole movement is built around resentment towards "elites" (by which they mean not rich people, but highly educated people - and especially, as you alluded to, highly educated people with a background in liberal arts and the "soft sciences" who have expertise in any particular subject matter). There are absolutely some highly educated people who are part of their coalition, but they are happy to cynically repeat the same critiques of higher education - and the highly educated - without acknowledging the benefit they received from their own education (or by using some sort of "to beat the enemy, I had to understand how he thinks" sort of logic).

If there is any general animating principle behind MAGA other than Trump worship, it is a disdain for educated coastal "elites" who use big fancy words, and the institutions where those people are educated that, as you note, they believe are indoctrinating their students with liberal ideology. Just listen to a monologue from the main character of any Taylor Sheridan show if you need a mission statement of why MAGA believes those people are the enemy and the "real Americans" are people who work with their hands and use 1- and 2-syllable words.

51 to 46% for college degree holders? To me that's pretty close.

 

[rodoheel]

51 to 46% for college degree holders? To me that's pretty close.

First of all, just in terms of framing: not everyone who voted for Trump in 2024 is "MAGA." Maybe 60-75% of those Trump voters are. I'm confident the numbers would be starker if you isolated for just people who identify as "MAGA."

Just for an example of how MAGA attitudes towards higher education are different than for Republicans as a whole, look at this Vanderbilt U polling from 2025: Vanderbilt Unity Poll: Confidence in higher education rebounds, though affordability and political bias are still concerns

Key excerpt:

Even looking at the opinions among partisan respondents, confidence in higher education is net positive. Among Democrats, there is a 48-percentage point difference in the percentage who express confidence {69 percent} and those who do not {21 percent}. Among Republicans, there is a 14 percentage point confidence gap {with 35 percent expressing confidence, 21 percent expressing a lack of confidence and the rest expressing “some” confidence}.

It is only among the 20 percent of the sample who say that they identify most with the Make America Great Again movement that confidence in higher education is slightly underwater—with 24 percent expressing confidence, 31 percent expressing a lack of confidence and the remaining 45 percent saying they have “some confidence.”

This quote is even more telling:


Sixty-five percent of those surveyed also believe colleges and institutions are having a positive effect on society, but here polarization is more telling. A large majority of Democrats and, to a lesser degree, traditional Republicans, hold this view. Most notably, among MAGA Republicans, 65 percent feel colleges and universities are having a negative impact on the state of the country.

Second of all, even the +5% Dem lean of 2024 presidential election voters with a n undergrad degree and the +9 Rep lean of the "some college" faction (which would be people who graduated HS but not college) is more than a "couple percentage points." And you will notice that even thhat 5% number looks like an outlier compared to the previous two elections.

 

[mpaer]

Most notably, among MAGA Republicans, 65 percent feel colleges and universities are having a negative impact on the state of the country.

Who the hell do they think are going be Doctors and Lawyers and such?

 

[Mulberry Heel]

Who the hell do they think are going be Doctors and Lawyers and such?

They don't like doctors and lawyers and the professional classes in general. These are people, after all, who completely ignored the warnings of mainstream doctors and medical experts and eagerly took horse paste called Ivermectin in the utterly wrong belief that it would cure covid. A big part of Trumpism is that it is a class war by working-class whites on the experts and professional classes - they're the "elites" that MAGAs talk about and disdain so much.