What is women’s obsession with “well-educated” men?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Okay let put it this way. A Harvard educated hedge fund managing director living in Connecticut with a country club membership has more social cache than the plumber owning ten businesses and making a few million. Its not about money. Its also about class. That managing director can mingle comfortably in circles the plumber business owner wont. And probably have connections to all that plummy internships for their kids. Sorry to all those women who married "intelligent" men who are all that, but you married a guy in a different class. Too bad. The lady doth protest too much.

Class and "well-educated" are not the same thing. The way you describe "class" sounds gross. I'm a PP - the plumber you described is basically my dad - not a plumber, but close enough. We grew up with land, horses, a boat, ski trips, tutors, expensive travel sports, a free undergraduate and post graduate education. I guess my classless dad couldn't give us a "plummy internship" but he gave us a beautiful life and future, and we still ended up with "plummy careers".... The PP's quote above is why I hate going to the country club with DH.

Uh huh. And the advantages your dad gave you propelled you to a different class, a plummy job and a country club. He could never join that world but his money made sure his kids dad. If you disdain it so much why didn’t give up your country club membership, marry a self made man like your dad and live a wealthy but blue collared lifestyle. Also encourage your kids to do the same. Oh wait….

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Uh huh. And the advantages your dad gave you propelled you to a different class, a plummy job and a country club. He could never join that world but his money made sure his kids dad. If you disdain it so much why didn’t give up your country club membership, marry a self made man like your dad and live a wealthy but blue collared lifestyle. Also encourage your kids to do the same. Oh wait….

DH is a very avid golfer so he'll never give up his country club membership, and he's self made, and there are aspects of our lifestyle that are blue collar. I only disdain the elitism that seems more present in country clubs than anywhere else.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Haven't read past page 1. Genes - they want big brains and tall men.

+1 for brains.

Also, intellectual stimulation and engaging conversation. Yes, I know there are plenty of smart people without college degrees. But when I was single and dating (on the apps up until a year ago), looking for a degree is the most efficient way to sort through thousands of profiles.

Plus, as others have said, there also can be somewhat of a cultural element that comes from achieving some form of higher education (not to conflate with career $$).

This thread is becoming increasingly repetitive. Hopefully OP has his answer.

College/well educated does not mean intelligent.

Eh. There’s always exceptions. But not having one certainly doesn’t mean intelligent either. When I think of my high school class there were no smart kids that didn’t go to college although I’m sure there were some dumb ones that did.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think it's a class issue. I have a graduate degree from a fancy school and grew up in a wealthy area, so I know a lot of UMC folks pretty well. But, my parents did not go to college, worked blue collar jobs, and were not into the whole UMC social scene. As a result, I know lots of people who are not "well educated" but read plenty, have diverse interests, and can hold their own in an intellectual conversation. They just did not go to college and do not work professional jobs. I also know lots of UMC women who would never consider dating any of those people, because they are not "well educated." The women will say it's about "ability to hold a conversation," but either they are ignorant or they are not being honest; plenty of these folks can hold a conversation. Instead, it really seems that they want someone who will fit in with their family and friends and is not too different. This is a class issue.

A degree is like a form of insurance.

If you are blue collar and the economy turns, you lose a job, etc. it’s harder to find work. Even Starbucks baristas have college degrees.

If you have a college degree it helps and if you have a graduate or professional degree it’s even more insurance (unless your loan debt is outrageous ).

It’s a tribe. Are you comfortable in a crowd with guys friends that didn’t finish high school or go to college and likely their girlfriends/wives too? I dated a few guys in 20s who never went to college and the women and crowd they hung out with I did not have much in common.

My husband came from a blue collar neighborhood, grew up very poor but got $ to go to a top university, speaks 3 languages fluently is well-read, Renaissance man that travels extensively. We can from different worlds.

Practically, the bolded is how I think about it. Are there plenty of intelligent, hard-working, decent people without college degrees who earn a good living? Sure. But college degrees afford many more options than without them, typically. That's why we encourage our kids to go to college and why DH's aunt insisted he attend, even though neither of his parents did. A bachelors degree gives you options. Graduate degrees can, too, of course, but they often come with a debt burden that may or may not be worth it.

But a plumber earns 100k a year on average without the stress time and gray hairs if takes to earn a college degree. A good real estate agent is the same.

A lot of these tradespeople only make decent money if they are in a union and there’s a lot that goes into that. Also those jobs are all good until you get injured in any way. My dad was a professor. You can literally do something like that until you die (and he did).

And realtors…are one of the top jobs slated for automation.

[Anonymous]

I want to marry someone smart. In general, smart people go to college, and get useful degrees. So no, I wouldn't marry an NYU film grad with a quarter of a million in debt. But if he double-majored in say, film AND marketing, and said he was going to work at a marketing firm for four years, spending two writing a screenplay and two trying to get it made before giving up, that would be fine with me. That's a viable plan.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Uh huh. And the advantages your dad gave you propelled you to a different class, a plummy job and a country club. He could never join that world but his money made sure his kids dad. If you disdain it so much why didn’t give up your country club membership, marry a self made man like your dad and live a wealthy but blue collared lifestyle. Also encourage your kids to do the same. Oh wait….

DH is a very avid golfer so he'll never give up his country club membership, and he's self made, and there are aspects of our lifestyle that are blue collar. I only disdain the elitism that seems more present in country clubs than anywhere else.

Right. But you enjoy being part of that social circle otherwise. He is self made but probably still has a college degree. Plenty of public golf courses he can practice his golf at, no need for a club. I can't even at the hypocrisy of this.

[Anonymous]

Because 90% of the (straight) men out there have such fragile egos that they can’t handle having an significant other who has a fancier degree than they do.


I didn’t go to an Ivy, but possibly a more “intimidating” school, and then I earned a few graduate degrees from very good schools.* SO SO many men out there with chips on their shoulders. Sometimes it doesn’t come out until later, sometimes it comes out within the first five minutes (and this is when the GUY asks where I went to school).

My husband still gets defensive and huffy about it about is the blue (although he hid it for a long time).

You can forestall all that man-baby nonsense if you just have it as a criteria…

*standard disclaimer for the fragile egos out there that I know people with similar degrees who are idiots, and plenty of very smart people without such degrees, as well as plenty of not so smart people without fancy degrees who make significantly more money than smart people with fancy degrees

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Men are obsessed with sex appeal

I suspect that you are on to something, though OP would probably be surprised to read this.

Men are more focused on looks and sex/figures (as shown by dating app research).

Women want someone smart, who can be a responsible adult (in terms of providing support for the household, as she also hopefully plans to do). But also someone who will share her interests in culture or political advocacy, rather than football and video games. Interesting conversations over candlelight dinners are more her fantasy than his.

[Anonymous]

Most kids in college today are dumb as rocks. Degrees mean nothing. I would tell any kid today to pick a trade school over some $200k debt that likely won’t amount to much. No I’m not anti university, but those videos of college kids who don’t even know proper math or geography is troubling.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Haven't read past page 1. Genes - they want big brains and tall men.

+1 for brains.

Also, intellectual stimulation and engaging conversation. Yes, I know there are plenty of smart people without college degrees. But when I was single and dating (on the apps up until a year ago), looking for a degree is the most efficient way to sort through thousands of profiles.

Plus, as others have said, there also can be somewhat of a cultural element that comes from achieving some form of higher education (not to conflate with career $$).

This thread is becoming increasingly repetitive. Hopefully OP has his answer.

College/well educated does not mean intelligent.

I literally said that in my post. Did you read it? I also said that when you’re scrolling through thousands of profiles of men on dating apps, “education” is typically the most *efficient* proxy for intelligence, even though you’ll likely screen out some smart ones along the way. If you haven’t dated in the past few years, lucky for you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Most kids in college today are dumb as rocks. Degrees mean nothing. I would tell any kid today to pick a trade school over some $200k debt that likely won’t amount to much. No I’m not anti university, but those videos of college kids who don’t even know proper math or geography is troubling.

+1000

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Most kids in college today are dumb as rocks. Degrees mean nothing. I would tell any kid today to pick a trade school over some $200k debt that likely won’t amount to much. No I’m not anti university, but those videos of college kids who don’t even know proper math or geography is troubling.

+1000

Yes, as opposed to 75 years ago, when the only people who went to college were white, non-jew UMC men. Because they were all so smart, and it just happened they were all white, non-jew UMC men. No dummies got let into to college with that system.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Okay let put it this way. A Harvard educated hedge fund managing director living in Connecticut with a country club membership has more social cache than the plumber owning ten businesses and making a few million. Its not about money. Its also about class. That managing director can mingle comfortably in circles the plumber business owner wont. And probably have connections to all that plummy internships for their kids. Sorry to all those women who married "intelligent" men who are all that, but you married a guy in a different class. Too bad. The lady doth protest too much.

Class and "well-educated" are not the same thing. The way you describe "class" sounds gross. I'm a PP - the plumber you described is basically my dad - not a plumber, but close enough. We grew up with land, horses, a boat, ski trips, tutors, expensive travel sports, a free undergraduate and post graduate education. I guess my classless dad couldn't give us a "plummy internship" but he gave us a beautiful life and future, and we still ended up with "plummy careers".... The PP's quote above is why I hate going to the country club with DH.

X1000000

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Most kids in college today are dumb as rocks. Degrees mean nothing. I would tell any kid today to pick a trade school over some $200k debt that likely won’t amount to much. No I’m not anti university, but those videos of college kids who don’t even know proper math or geography is troubling.

+1000

Yes, as opposed to 75 years ago, when the only people who went to college were white, non-jew UMC men. Because they were all so smart, and it just happened they were all white, non-jew UMC men. No dummies got let into to college with that system.

We have in the above quote excellent evidence that the US education system is indeed breaking down.

PP says 75 years ago no one would go to college except white UMC men. 75 years ago is "1946" when the GI bill was putting anyone who had been in uniform in the Second World War into a college classroom. 70 years ago my father went to the university and I doubt there was anyone poorer in his class. He was the child of immigrants, and grew up in a two room shack with six brothers and sisters.

But even before that, 80 and 90 years ago, all sorts of people the PP says couldn't go to college did. Jews like Milton Friedman, Barry Goldwater, Kenneth Arrow, and Paul Samuelson attended some of the best universities in America in the 1920s and 30s.

Judah Benjamin was a US Senator from Louisiana in the 1850s, and the Secretary of State of the Confederacy from 1862-1865. And he was also a Jew, and a lawyer, and he went to Yale in the 1820s.

By 1940 there has been six Jewish senators in US history, four of them were elected from the south, all were lawyers and all but one of those men had gone to college.

Did you know that in the US prior to 1946 many Blacks went to college, some even before the Civil War, and many afterwards? There were at least a dozen Black doctors in the Union Army during the Civil War, and at least one of those doctors was a graduate of Yale's medical school. Soon after the Civil War there were hundreds of Black lawyers working in the US, many in the south, along with Black doctors, professors, scientists, reverends, and teachers, and they all had two-year, four-year and graduate degrees. Have you heard of Katherine Johnson or George Washington Carver? Johnson was in graduate school in the 1930s and Carver was in graduate school in the 1890s.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"Well-educated" = financially well off. The same as when women say they want a man who is "ambitious".

Not necessarily; you can be well educated without having made your money yet. Plenty of people marry potential, it’s more important that the guy have a plan and the ability to follow it.

“Well educated” = I can take him to work events and he can have intelligent conversations with my colleagues and clients. He will fit in at the school, pool, club, neighborhood I aspire to be part of, he will value education and want the same things for our kids so that we can pass on our privilege and generational wealth, ideally he has decent earning potential and a chosen career path.

I know some well educated men in their late 30s who still ride a skateboard to their barista job so that they can focus on their art or their band in the evenings. I know some well educated men who have massive debt and work in the arts or at non-profits because that’s their passion. I don’t think that’s who women are referring to when they say well educated.

When did people become such losers? When I was 30 I had a PhD, a good job, a wife, two cars, and a house. Nice vacations, too.

Cool story. You managed to be the biggest dork on 10+ page thread full of incels.

I’d definitely take a plumber over this guy. The small D energy is so strong I can feel it here in my living room.