Republicans are exploiting the diploma divide they helped to create

Since November, there has been a lot of discussion about the so-called “diploma divide” seen in the election results, where the majority of voters without a four-year college degree voted for Donald Trump and a majority with a four-year college degree voted for Kamala Harris.

In response to the diploma divide, some have argued that the Democrats have become the party of the elites who have forgotten about working-class Americans. While there is much to criticize about the Democratic Party’s failure to fight for the needs of working-class Americans, including supporting disastrous trade policies for American workers, the notion that Republicans have become champions of the working class is laughable. 

Republicans have supported those same trade policies, undermined unions and consistently opposed increasing federal and state minimum wages.

Lost in the analysis of the diploma divide is the reality that the widening gap between Americans with and without college education is a result of the Republican-led attack on the American working class.

It is true that Americans should not have to attend college to have a decent living, but it is also true that millions of poor and working-class Americans have counted on higher education to improve their conditions and increase their wages. However, over the past four decades, those opportunities have diminished largely in part to policies championed by the Republican Party.

At the federal level, the Pell Grant represents the most significant form of support for poor and working-class Americans to attend college. Since its creation in 1965, the Pell Grant has provided financial support to over 80 million Americans. 

However, over the past four decades, the Pell Grant’s purchasing power has decreased. In the 1970s, the Pell Grant covered nearly 80 percent of tuition, room and board at public colleges and universities. Currently, the Pell Grant covers less than a third of these costs. 

The decline in the Pell Grant’s purchasing power began in 1980, when Republican president Ronald Reagan drastically cut federal spending on higher education. Between 1980 and 1985, federal spending on higher education decreased by 25 percent, which included a $338 million reduction in the Pell Grant program. 

Since then, Republicans have continued to seek cuts to the Pell Grant, including congressional efforts in 2011 and 2015 and during Trump’s first term in office.

In addition to the Pell Grant, Republicans have for decades disinvested in state colleges and universities. Public institutions of higher education provide the most accessible, affordable and effective college opportunity for working-class Americans.

Although Democrats and Republicans have cut funding for state institutions of higher education over the past four decades, research has shown how state disinvestment in higher education is more likely to happen under Republican governorships. Research has also shown how Democratic-controlled states spend more per pupil on higher education than Republican-controlled states.

Decreasing federal financial aid and disinvesting in state colleges and universities, policies that Republicans have championed, disproportionately affect the poor and working-class. As government support for public higher education decreased, state colleges and universities increasingly relied on tuition as a major source of income. 

While children of the wealthy can afford increasing tuition, children of poor and working-class families have to take out loans to pay for college. As of 2020, the total student loan debt in the U.S. was over $1.6 trillion and the average college graduate owed over $30,000 in school loans.

These factors, which are a result of policy decisions, have contributed to the diploma divide that Republican officials now seek to exploit for political gains. To be sure, the Democratic Party is a culprit in America’s failure to address the needs of the working class but to suggest that the Republican Party is the champion of the working class is inaccurate at best.

A genuine working-class agenda must consist of a robust re-investment in the Pell Grant and public institutions of higher education. Public institutions like the City University of New York, Rutgers University-Newark, the University of California and California State systems and the University of Texas system, among others, have a track record of providing students from poor and working-class families opportunities of social mobility. 

At a time of massive inequality, a commitment to addressing the needs of poor and working-class people demands a collective effort to eradicate the diploma divide, not exploit it.

Domingo Morel is an associate professor of political science and public service at New York University and a Public Voices fellow with The OpEd Project. He is the author of “Developing Scholars: Race, Politics, and the Pursuit of Higher Education.”