The Anti-College Movement: A Movement of Elitists

Travis Burchart
6 min readJun 19, 2024

God help us if this is the advice we’re giving young adults:

I like to put it this way: You never see a dude pull up in a Ferrari and think, “Oh, I bet he has a college degree!” So, I tell my kids, why would you walk a path that by design does not lead to wealth and prosperity?

That’s Bobby Kittleberger, quoted in the Fox News article Adults who skipped college urge high school grads to follow suit, say rewards are ‘immeasurable’. Any way you read the quote, it’s elitist. One says it with their nose turned up and their eyes cast down, shaming those who drive a Mazda or who enjoy teaching or who do good work for modest pay. This, in a nutshell, is today’s anti-college movement … a movement that 1) defines life by wealth and 2) shames personal choice.

Higher education, of course, needs to be improved, and higher education, of course, isn’t for everyone. But in addressing these ideas, many focus solely on money as if college’s only purpose is to “wealthify” graduates. This is elitism, the idea that college — regardless of who you are or what you want — is a good investment ONLY IF it leaves you financially and materialistically “superior.”

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Travis Burchart

Social media expert, higher education advocate, writer, Founding Fathers fan, lawyer in a past life