How College Education Divided America

It was only later that I realized how rare such an event had become, where I spoke to somebody with a very different education profile, occupation, and interests from mine. This made me consider what would have happened if, on my other side at the bar, there had been somebody with a Ph.D. and an occupation similar to mine (academic, financier, consultant, lawyer, etc.). Whom would I have chosen to initiate a conversation with? Whom would the participants in the workshop I attended have chosen? The answer seemed almost too obvious, and not completely unrelated to why the plight of manual workers was less than top of mind for many college-educated policymakers, activists, and civil servants.

I later embellished the choice a little and offered it to several friends and participants at various conferences: If stranded at an airport, with a professional with a Ph.D. from a faraway land (China, India, Brazil, Nigeria) on one side and an American high school graduate on the other, to whom would you look forward to talking for the next hour? Many took the question to be rhetorical, because the answer was, again, too obvious.