My observation is completely the opposite. Higher education is the source of today's youth radicalization. Harvard, Columbia, UPenn are all ground zeros of radicalization that we as society going to suffer from for decades.
And regarding your Idaho farmers and other nutters with horns on the head, they are too irrelevant and dumb to cause anything serious even in large numbers.
Social media and its propagandists are the source of modern radicalization, together with failure of neoliberalism to produce growth that benefits the little guy. The university far leftist radical and rural Trump voter have lots in common in hating the status quo. They just blame different things, often the wrong ones like migrants or white privilege.
Everyone not in the billionaire club should hate neoliberalism.