Are we looking down on the relatively less educated? Is this the new prejudice? As more of us have a tertiary degree, or advanced degree, are those without, merely armed with a diploma, less of value, character and worth?
It is ironic that the one who wrote the article - “Disdain for the less educated is the last acceptable prejudice” - is a highly respected, well known, and eminently educated professor from, well, you guessed it, Harvard...where else right?
But what Michael J. Sandel has to say is a message of great urgency and importance to us all, not just Americans, but worldwide, especially the economically advanced nations.
Professor Sandel started his illuminating article with this reminder: “Mr Joe Biden has a secret weapon in his bid for the United States presidency: He is the first Democratic nominee in 36 years without a degree from an Ivy League university.”
Considering that “in the US Congress, 95 per cent of House members and 100 per cent of senators are college graduates”, academically bland Joe is the black swan in a predominantly educated white swan Congress.
When it comes to prejudice, there is a growing gap between the credentialed and the uncredentialed, and looking at the statistics in US Congress, it is obvious that we live in a world where “the credentialed few govern the uncredentialed many.” 
Now let’s not be naive, you can’t avoid prejudices in this world we live in. We are somehow hardwired to pigeonhole people of diverse backgrounds into categories to make it easier to precast, prejudge, and prejudice.
We may be reminded not to judge a person by the colour of his skin nor the gender or nation she’s born in, but when it comes to education, we are fast dividing the world into those who have degree and those who have not. Even amongst those who have degree, we further divide them into those who have degree from ivy league schools and those who have degree from community colleges.
That is why in America, one of the leading causes of despair resulting in suicide is when one is being left behind just because he or she does not have a degree. For them, there is just no chance of upward mobility. For them, there is no chance of competing with those who have better education. And for them, the American dream has mutated into an American nightmare.
Professor Sandel wrote: “And, despite its inspiring promise of success based on merit, it has a dark side. Building a politics around the idea that a college degree is a precondition for dignified work and social esteem has a corrosive effect on democratic life.”
“It devalues the contributions of those without a diploma, fuels prejudice against the less-educated members of society, effectively excludes most working people from elective government and provokes political backlash.”
Yet, every single day we worship at the altar of merit centred essentially on grade. Our billion-dollar tuition industry is a clear indictment of the obsession that has no name, only a combined number on perforated paper our employers are equally obsessed with, especially our monolith civil service. That seems to determine where you will end up in society, what you will do eventually, how people will see you superficially, and why you are politely identified, blindly sorted and quietly shelved.
As one psychologist Thomas R. Guskey observed: “If someone proposed combining measures of height, weight, diet, and exercise into a single number or mark to represent a person’s physical condition, we would consider it laughable...Yet every day, teachers combine aspects of students’ achievement, attitude, responsibility, effort, and behavior into a single grade that’s recorded on a report card and no one questions it.”
The truth is, your degree, regardless of which university you come from, does not define you. We know that, and want so much to believe that. But the issue, according to Professor Sandel is that society still defines you based on it, and now, curiously, even more.
That is the prejudicial one-dimensional ladder we are all made to scale in a fiercely meritocratic and arrogantly aristocratic society we live in. This is how author Todd Rose (of “The End it Average”) puts it: -
“We all feel the weight of the one-dimensional thinking that has become so pervasive in our averagarian culture: a standardised educational system that ceaselessly sorts and ranks us; a workplace that hires us based on these educational rankings, then frequently imposes new rankings at every annual performance review; a society that doles out rewards, esteem, and adoration according to our professional ranking.”
“When we look up at these artificial, arbitrary, and meaningless rungs that we are expected to climb, we worry that we might not fully ascend them, that we will be denied those opportunities that are only afforded to those who muscle their way up the one-dimensional ladder.”
Let me end with the quiet but tidal-like wisdom of Professor Sandel.
He said that “history suggests little correlation between the capacity for political judgment and the ability to win admission to elite universities. The notion that “the best and the brightest” are better at governing than their less credentialed fellow citizen is a myth born of meritocratic hubris.”
He calls for renewing of the dignity of work by putting aside all prejudicial preconditions. He also calls for us to reassess the way we define success and question our meritocratic hubris, by asking ourselves: “Is it my doing that I have the talents that society happens to prize - or is it my good luck?”
He adds: “Appreciating the role of luck in life can prompt a certain humility: There, but for an accident of birth, or the grace of God, or the mystery of fate, go I. This spirit of humility is the civic virtue we need now.”
Indeed, and strangely, attributing it to luck keeps one grounded, because what is perceived as causation, solo effort of one, is often correlation, group effort of many, disguising as luck.
Attributing luck is therefore not living your life randomly, surrendering to circumstantial whims, but it is living life realistically, standing on the shoulders of many who came before us.
I guess that is why the late former deputy prime minister Goh Keng Swee once told veteran banker Wee Cho Yaw that it is better to be born lucky than to be smart. There is a lot of Sandelian wisdom about it.
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