What, you ask, is the diploma divide? Here’s how Google’s AI summarizes it in one paragraph:

The “diploma divide” describes a significant political split in the U.S., where college-educated voters increasingly lean Democratic, supporting progressive social views and experts, while non-college-educated voters (especially white voters) increasingly lean Republican, embracing populist messages and distrusting institutions like universities, creating a major realignment in party alignment based on education level rather than just income or class. 

I came across a discussion of the diploma divide reading Outclassed: How the Left Lost the Working Class and How to Win Them Back (St. Martins Press, 2025) by Joan C. Williams, a law prof. As she recounts in Chapter One, “Is There Really a Diploma Divide?”, this migration of non-college educated white voters away from the Democrats to the Republican Party (under the MAGA banner) is a recent thing, maybe over the last dozen years. They turned from voting Democrat out of anxiety over declining economic prospects and frustration that neither party seemed to be listening to their concerns. Trump’s right-wing populism was attractive to them — it seemed to address their issues — and the rest is history. So there really is a diploma divide. Read the chapter or some other discussion for the full story.

This is not a political post. The above discussion is just to set up our own issue, namely: Is there an LDS diploma divide? At one level, the political case, it is almost certainly true that the political story recounted above applies to the Mormon population, although most Mormons, regardless of education or income, voted Republican to start with. My query is whether the diploma divide is evident in other aspects of Mormon life and belief. Here are some quick reflections.

First, something of a corollary. Looking at the political diploma divide from the other side, I would claim that Mormons most likely to resist the attraction of Trump and MAGA would be college-educated whites and non-white non-college educated people. Remember, in the LDS Church, rejecting Trump and MAGA is swimming against the tide. Someone with data sets (LDS statistical department or individual researchers) might be able to make a persuasive case for or aginst; all that you and I can produce are our own anecdotal observations and experience.

Second, might an LDS diploma divide explain how an individual Mormon breaks on the black-and-white versus more nuanced approach to LDS belief and practice? Maybe that corresponds to Iron Rod Mormons versus Liahona Mormons, labels and a discussion that goes back several decades. I’ve read accounts that *describe* Iron Rod versus Liahona types, but not with any particular effort to *explain* why a person is one or the other by crunching data or even proposing a model. The point is that people don’t just turn 18 or 25 and decide, “Hey, I’m a black-and-white thinker, an Iron Rodder.” There is data that can be crunched, just like for the political diploma divide. Maybe an LDS diploma divide explains some of the difference, maybe it doesn’t.

Third, I’ll bet you have noticed a diploma divide in LDS leadership, which skews in favor of the college-educated professional class. The higher you look in the hierarchy, the stronger the effect. Does that mean I’m suggesting that LDS leadership is therefore more likely to take a nuanced view of LDS doctrine and practice? Or, in a political vein, to be more likely to resist Trump and MAGA? Not necessarily. LDS leadership is not a random draw from the pool of active college-educated Mormon men. It skews conservative. I’m pretty sure that any candidate who is openly politically liberal and doctrinally nuanced is just not going to feel right to the existing LDS leader evaluating candidates and then extending a call. So a conservative leadership cadre tends to select new leaders who are at least as conservative as they are.

Fourth, what about age cohorts? Obviously, the college versus non-college split doesn’t apply to LDS youth or young adults until maybe mid-twenties. Maybe after retirement the effect diminishes, as senior citizens become less involved in civic life and maybe less concerned with the kind of issues and questions we talk about here at W&T and other venues. It’s too much to say that old people, including old Mormons, all think alike, but it is certainly true that other topics (healthcare, retirement assets and income, grandkids, legacy issues) become important for all seniors, regardless of politics, income, or education.

There are two ways to look at age cohorts. One is with the reliable data that I have seen (you have too) showing younger LDS cohorts are less conservative, sometimes considerably less conservative, on a variety of LDS issues than are older LDS age cohorts. But there is also the question of whether the average Mormon becomes gradually more liberal or nuanced over the course of their life. My gut feeling is that some in *both* groups, college and non-college, become more liberal or nuanced over time. On the other hand, seniors tend to be reliably conservative in both the political and religious sense, which argues that most people become more conservative, not less, over the course of their lives. I can see this both ways. Need. More. Data.

Fifth, not all college degrees are the same. I wonder whether more detailed data might break down the diploma divide effect by area of study. Likewise for LDS leadership. You see a lot more lawyers, accountants, and business types in leadership than humanities majors or social science types.

Finally, a disclaimer. I’m not making any value judgments on college versus non-college persons in this discussion. Obviously, there are good and bad people, likable people and jerks, in both camps. But it’s just a demographic fact that there are college educated and non-college people in the country, and the diploma divide data shows that this contrast has explanatory power politically. My discussion here is to ask whether it might also have some explanatory power for differences in LDS belief and practice.

So what do you think? Does this discussion ring a bell for you? Or do you think I’m barking up the wrong tree?

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