Does the infamous ‘diploma democracy’ exist? The society in which university-educated people are in charge in politics and administration and practically educated people are left behind – in work, prosperity, housing, health and control? And which can therefore become a powder keg of social and political resentment?
Yes, it exists. Jeroen van der Waal, professor of sociology at Erasmus University Rotterdam, says that the issue has now been settled. He investigates the connection between education and political resentment and is cited in the new edition of Diploma democracy by public administration experts Mark Bovens and Anchrit Wille.
No, that doesn’t exist. Education is important, but there is no reason to panic about growing segregation by education. Says sociologist Jan Willem Duyvendak. In his own recent book Ghost canyons he criticizes the idea that social gaps, including those in education, have become ominously wide. We are actually growing closer to each other, he says, and have therefore become more sensitive to remaining social inequality. He accuses Bovens and Wille of “a poor sense of proportion.” They reply to him in the sociologists’ magazine Social Issues. He makes a “straw man” of their work, they think. The dividing line between education is a social reality, “based on facts, not feelings.”
Yes, it exists to a certain extent, but Bovens and Wille exaggerate. Says Will Tiemeijer, professor of behavioral sciences at Erasmus University Rotterdam. “Does education matter? Yes, of course. On average, higher educated people earn more than lower educated people, they have better homes in nicer neighborhoods, they are healthier, they live longer, and so on. No serious scientist will dispute this. But those differences have always been there.” Bovens and Wille, he says, “make a longitudinal claim that the differences have increased in recent decades. In fact, they even see a new pillarization. That claim is controversial.”
The academic battle for ‘diploma democracy’ has flared up, albeit in a smaller circle than in the first round. When Bovens and Wille’s book was published in 2011, it caused a stir among sociologists and political scientists. There was praise but also criticism: this was not that new, or it was not that bad. A bundle appeared, A gap of all timeswith skeptical and relativizing comments.
That skepticism has largely “disappeared,” Bovens and Wille note in the new edition. Political scientists are now conducting research into the political overrepresentation of highly educated people, and sociologists are examining education as a new dividing line.
Displacement by professionals
In any case, the figures confirm the trend. In the 1960s, 1 percent of Dutch people had an academic degree, in 2024 more than 14 percent (and a total of 35 percent had a higher education). The share of highly educated people in the House of Representatives and municipal councils has increased to around 80 percent. In social organizations, less educated people have been displaced by highly educated ones professionals. It is not religion or class that determines how people live – and how much they have a say in politics – but education. Thus Bovens and Wille.
That’s how it is, agrees Professor Van der Waal. He calls objections like Duyvendak’s interesting, but he believes they do not detract from the main point. “You can point out that practically and academically educated people also agree on many topics, such as equality or the right to abortion. That’s right, we are a liberal country. But when it comes to the crucial issues of our time – migration, climate – you see that they think very differently about it. That dividing line really runs along education.” He sees this as a setback after the anti-authoritarian 1960s, with which higher educated people in particular feel comfortable. “The relevance of that authoritarian tendency of the practically educated is still underestimated.”
Yet not everyone is convinced. First of all, because the terminology remains confusing. Bovens and Wille speak in their book of a separation between academics and those with practical training, but more and more scientists are replacing ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ with the much broader ‘theoretically’ and ‘practically’ trained. Tiemeijer: “A conceptual mess has arisen. Who is practically educated? At first, only those with a lower level of education were referred to as such, but increasingly those with secondary education are also included or even those with higher professional education. The entire range of educational routes is simplified to just two flavors. This creates a division constructed. “If you look at averages,” he says, “there are certainly significant differences between educational groups, but the differences within groups are often significantly larger, and that is in danger of disappearing from view.”
In Amsterdam, sociologist Jan Willem Duyvendak draws very different conclusions from the growth of the group of academically trained people. He sees this based on CBS figures overalls no increase in social segregation. He concludes that lower-educated people interact less with each other than before, precisely because there are fewer lower-educated people.
Bovens and Wille, he believes, misunderstand the drastically changed social relations in the Netherlands. Inequality is a bad smell everywhere and it is precisely the elite who are being blamed for it in the media and politics. Higher educated people, he writes Social Issues“no longer dare to see themselves as ‘higher’.” They stand “in the dock” and are “ashamed” when they are challenged about their privileges. In The Hague politics, ‘the common man’, with his wishes and grievances, “has long since become the norm, from right to left.”
The myth of looking down
That higher educated people look down on lower educated people is in any case a myth, says Professor Tiemeijer. In Social Issues he already broke down the figures about such “affective polarization”. To the extent that there is affective polarization – say, disliking others – it does not proceed along educational lines. On topics such as climate or migration, content is the deciding factor when it comes to affective polarization, not education.
For that reason, Tiemeijer also objects to the image of a “column”. He is working on an article about voting behavior and political pillarization. “I show that the idea of a new political pillar along educational lines is unsustainable. Higher-educated people are just as likely to vote on the right as on the left. If that is the case, what is the shared group interest of this higher-educated ‘pillar’?”
Sociologist Van der Waal in Rotterdam is not impressed by the reservations. “I don’t think it’s a strong argument that the education gap has not increased because many more people than before are highly educated. That only makes the gap with the practically educated even more significant. It not only has to do with political views, but also with lifestyle, clothing and taste.” Right down to the names you give children. Kimberley and Kevin versus Fleur and Floris among academics.
And Kevin is less represented in politics and government than Floris, according to the message Diploma democracywhich does not make a global distinction between ‘high’ and ‘low’ or ‘theoretical’ and ‘practical’, but between university-educated and practically educated people. Bovens and Wille point out that 80 percent of the members of the House of Representatives are now academically educated. In Social Issues Duyvendak counters that higher educated people even had a factor in the House of Representatives in the 1950s ten were overrepresented, now only by a factor of two. So that gap has decreased.
But that misses the point, says sociologist Quita Muis, who received his PhD from Tilburg University in 2024 for research into polarization: “Then you look at the relative change. But it is about the absolute decline in the number of practically trained people. That is now only 20 percent. That has an effect on the extent to which the interests of the practically trained are represented.” According to her, higher educated people have become more similar in their views than lower educated people and see more polarization.
And what about the angry citizen, who has controlled the talk show tables and The Hague politics for almost a quarter of a century? Van der Waal: “That may be true, but it is not just about ‘listening to the angry citizen’. That can also take on something patronizing. The more important question is whether people recognize themselves in politics and whether it delivers what people want. That is not the case for the practically educated. In the book A left-wing story by journalist Coen van de Ven there is a nice passage about PvdA executives visiting a working-class neighborhood. They will then appeal to people there about the importance of the climate. You really think you’re going to Lucky TV is watching. They don’t know the world of those people at all.”
Parties turn against inequality
Muis says: “Higher educated people identify much more strongly with their level of education than lower educated people. They also feel more connected to people with the same level of education.” Duyvendak, in turn, points out that it is precisely the political parties that attract higher educated people who are opposing social inequality, while a large proportion of lower educated people have started to vote ‘right’. He therefore believes that the accusation that higher educated people in politics do not stand up for the interests of lower educated people is unjustified. “It shouldn’t get any crazier.”
But, says Van der Waal, the gap is not tied to income, it cuts across economic classes. “Among the practically educated, still two-thirds of the population, there are also people who live in a semi-detached house with two cars in front of the door. I wouldn’t call that poor or disadvantaged. But they do think very differently about politics than highly educated people. The practically educated consider migration or strict punishment of an escaped TBS prisoner more important than a few euros more per month. They have a different idea of what is good for the Netherlands. There is no economic logic behind that.”
Well one political logic, says political scientist Merijn Oudenampsen, an early critic of Diploma democracy. “The cultural divide between educational groups is not a natural phenomenon, it is actively politicized and mobilized by political elites.” The book, he believes, acts “as if political ideology does not exist or does not matter.” While this, says Oudenampsen, is crucial for understanding current socio-cultural relations.
Van der Waal sees it differently: “I would very hesitate to claim that people vote for populist parties because they do not see or understand their own interests properly. They have a different idea of what would be beautiful and good for the Netherlands.”
Also read
An interview with Mark Bovens and Anchrit Wille about their book Diploma democracy: ‘Truly separate worlds are emerging along the lines of educational level’
The journalistic principles of NRC
