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Comment by jackcosgrove | Hacker News Reader

Not to mention the dating and marriage prospects without a college degree, even if you outearn a degree holder, are worse.

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Turns out that outside the HN startup bubble there are a lot of perfectly nice women who don’t have white collar careers who still want husbands. Electricians and plumbers generally marry women like elementary school teachers, nurses, house cleaners, and administrative assistants.

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2016-who-marries-whom/

I didn't mean to imply that the "prospects" were referring to the quality of the other partner, but rather to the probability of being married at all. There's a well-documented marriage rate gap based on educational attainment. This is a recent trend.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/social-mobility-memos/2016/08...

Note that this article is plotting "% of women 40-45 currently married". Limitations: 1) only women, 2) "currently married" instead of "ever married", 3) the 40-45 age band is when kids finish HS if you had them in your early 20s, which could juice the divorce rate. I tried to get a broader picture from data.census.gov, but I don't know how to navigate it well enough to recreate the Brookings graph.

https://data.census.gov/table?t=Marital+Status+and+Marital+H...

My guess is once the date sees a nicer house, car, and bank account, the college degree bump drops like an anchor.

The trouble there is that you're probably out of your prime dating years by the time you're your own boss and really making big money in the trades. It takes time to establish and build that business, the early years can be pretty lean as people get the business going.

Going by post-secondary education status tends to filter for a character trait I’ve yet to name. The closest I’ve come is something akin to long-term emotional regulation. Obviously, there’s many, many exceptions to this.

I’ve worked in an environment where there was a mix of grads from certificate, diploma and degree programs.

There were certain “profiles” of people that you would come to expect from each “bin” and 8/10 times your hunches were right.

Most guys on the internet think a guy has to meet a high bar of requirements when really all they want is someone who is not so dependent on them: can take care of himself, cover his own bills, etc. Someone who’s self sufficient and doesn’t need a mother.

Sure, maybe that one girl passed on you in your 20s because you didn’t have the right credentials, but there are plenty of other people out there.

In America, no. College-educated women are NOT interested in men without college degrees, no matter how much money they make. There might be rare exceptions for men that managed to become educated on their own after dropping out, like Steve Jobs.

It's not about the money, it's about the class, and also the pedigree. Blue-collar people are simply in a very different class than white-collar college-educated people. Their life experiences are completely different, and in the last few decades, with political polarization, their political views are 180 degrees different too.

If she wants my for my money she can move on, no loss.

Money is one of the most important elements in a relationship. Anyone telling you "love conquers all" is a fool or privileged to the point of ignorance.

When you say "Money is one of the most important elements in a relationship", do you mean financial stability in the broad sense, or something else?

While this is certainly true to an extent (and I wouldn't say it's "money" that's important, but rather "financial stability"), the issue researchers have seen is that high-earning women in America simply will not "date down". These women have more than enough money for 2 people, but even so will not date men who earn less than themselves. The opposite is not the case: men earning the same don't have this same requirement of dating partners, and in fact usually date women who earn less, many times much less.

And it's not even just the money. A woman with a college degree may be unwilling to date a tradesperson even if he's making $200k and she $30k.

Exactly, and for good reason too. The two people are so far apart politically, culturally, and in basic values and worldview that they aren't going to be able to have a lasting relationship.

That's not a given. A woman with a BSc may come from a very similar background as a carpenter or electrician, but may reject him simply because she feels that her degree proves that she deserves better than that.

The background isn't important. Lots of college-educated people came from families that weren't college-educated (I'm one of those). The college experience, and having a college education, makes you very different from people who didn't go to college. I wouldn't date a woman without a college degree either.

> I wouldn't date a woman without a college degree either.

I'm curious: Do you have a postgraduate degree, and if yes, would you be willing to data someone with "only" a BSc?

Let's say that someone has a PhD from a top university, for them to date someone without a BSc involves a greater gap than if someone with a mediocre BSc/BA from a community college dates an electrician.

> The background isn't important.

Here I disagree pretty strongly. An undergraduate will not provide the kind of class someone with multiple generations of doctors, lawyers, professors or "old money" tend to be instilled with during their childhood. Of course, those kids will almost always end up in college (if they're healthy).

In my experience, those from working class families tend fake their sophistication (often overcompensating) at least well into the 30s to compensate, if their education takes them into such circles.

No, I have a BS. I can't speak for people with graduate degrees, but I would say there's not that much difference except the grad degree people spent more time on a campus. The people with a BS/BA still have a proper education and understand the value of education and have been through the college experience. Arguably, someone who went to community college falls short of this.

In my experience, people who never went to college just have a very different outlook on life. There's a very good reason the political polarization in America today has a large component of being aligned along educational attainment.

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