Opinion: Being ‘Woke’ Is A Privilege

August 1, 2025

[Image Source: U.S. Confidence in Higher Education Now Closely Divided]

On November 6th, 2024, no room in the country glowed redder than a political science classroom at a liberal arts college in California. Next to the projector showing the electoral map, two professors discussed the same statistics regurgitated every election cycle - educated people vote blue. Fortunately, it only costs an average of $38,720 per year to learn about the importance of your vote. Even if you have that money to spare (or can get your hands on a scholarship), becoming politically educated might not be that easy. 

The ‘Diploma Divide,’ as Professor Zingher of Old Dominion University dubbed it, has become one of the strongest predictors of voting behavior, and it certainly rang true in the 2024 election. The Pew Research Center found that college graduates, and especially those with postgraduate degrees, voted overwhelmingly for Harris. Higher education, more than most other factors, has been found to increase civic and political literacy, as college-educated people are more likely to vote than those less educated. By engaging with and learning about diverse groups, students also become more educated on civil rights. 

As academic institutions make it increasingly hard for disadvantaged people to receive an education, research shows four-year programs are most impactful in terms of civic and socioeconomic outcomes for those very same individuals. Simply put, universities are least accessible to those most likely to become politically engaged and contribute to the economy through education. Voting is the main democratic tool, and it is shaped vastly by educational attainment. If higher education is treated as a luxury, not a right, only a select few can make truly informed political decisions. Those shunned by educational institutions and politicians have caught on, and they no longer care about becoming politically informed.    

Aside from the exorbitant cost of college, Americans across the political spectrum are losing confidence in the value of a college degree and the future of higher education, Gallup reports. While Republicans report the highest drop in confidence, 41% of all those who have little confidence in higher education say it is because it has become too “political,” i.e., too liberal. As universities have increased focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, backlash has become stronger against the groups these initiatives aimed to protect. While the term ‘DEI’ has broad negative connotations, many actually agree with its principles when detached from the term, a study finds. ‘DEI’ is villainized when universities fail to properly explain how it is being implemented, and instead they just plaster a generic statement of commitment on their website. If all you know about college is that 1) it’s too ‘woke’ and liberal, and 2) ‘woke’ is bad, higher education loses its appeal.   

Learning about diversity is not an easy task even if you are excited about it. The semester following the 2024 election, I took an anthropology & gender studies class that focused on the history of transgender issues. The textbooks described vague and abstract concepts, using terms like “cross-cutting forms of identification,” and the names of these concepts changed as the books progressed without explanation. For context, when I was doing research on the same campus, I had to modify my surveys because too few people knew what ‘cisgender’ meant and whether they identified that way. 

Thankfully, the professor’s goal was to help us actually understand and empathize, so she explained every single sentence in the texts and supplemented them with real-life examples, such as viewings of Paris is Burning and other personal anecdotes from real people. Academic texts focused on vulnerable communities should not entail such extensive effort to be comprehended. While academic rigor is vital, learning about the struggles of real minority groups should not be a litmus test of intelligence. 

When academia requires advanced degrees to understand issues of equality, information and empathy become privileges reserved for a small elite. Language is the most powerful tool to share information, and too often it is exclusionary. If the goal of higher education is to create informed and empathetic citizens - and to increase diversity, equity, and inclusion -  meeting students where they are is the only solution to the growing civic illiteracy issue. By making education accessible, we can protect democracies from poverty, injustice, and inequality. 

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Glossary

• Academia - the environment or community concerned with the pursuit of research, education, and scholarship.

• Anecdotes - a short story about a real incident or person.

• Attainment - the action or fact of achieving a goal towards which one has worked. 

• Civil rights - the rights that each person has in a society, whatever their race, sex, or religion. 

• Civic literacy - the knowledge and skills needed for effective participation in civic life, including understanding governmental processes, staying informed, and exercising citizenship rights and responsibilities. 

• Cisgender - a person whose gender identity corresponds with the sex registered for them at birth; not transgender.

• Cross-cutting forms of identification - how various social identities (like race, gender, class, etc.) intersect and influence an individual's experience.

• Democracy - a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives.

• Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) - a framework or approach used by organizations to promote fair treatment and full participation for all individuals, especially those who have historically been underrepresented or marginalized.

• Electoral map - a map showing the distribution of constituencies over a country. 

• Exclusionary - the exclusion of something, especially from a contract or group.

• Exorbitant - unreasonably high.

• Litmus test - a decisively indicative test.

• Political literacy - the knowledge, skills, and values that enable individuals to understand and participate effectively in political processes and public life.

• Postgraduate degree - a degree pursued after completing a bachelor's degree. 

• Regurgitated - to give back or repeat, especially something not fully understood or assimilated.

• Shunned - persistently avoided, ignored, or rejected.

• Rigor - the quality of being intellectually challenging and demanding. 

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Sources

1. Ahearn, C. E., Brand, J. E., & Zhou, X. (2023). How, and for whom, does higher education 

   increase voting? Research in Higher Education, 64, 574–597. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11162-022-09717-4. 

2. Brodbeck, T., Hannahs, L., Kennedy, S., Kromrey, C., & Levy, D. (2025). Beyond DEI: 

   Understanding public opinion on diversity, equity, & inclusion. AAPOR. https://aapor.org/newsletters/beyond-dei-understanding-public-opinion-on-diversity-equity-inclusion/. 

3. Hanson, M. (2025). Average cost of college & tuition. EducationData.org. 

   https://educationdata.org/average-cost-of-college. 

4. Jones, J. M. (2024). U.S. confidence in higher education now closely divided. Gallup. 

   https://news.gallup.com/poll/646880/confidence-higher-education-closely-divided.aspx. 

5. Losing America's Memory 2.0. (2024). American Council of Trustees and Alumni. 

   https://www.goacta.org/resource/losing-americas-memory-2-0/. 

6. The Right to Education. (2025). UNESCO.

   https://www.unesco.org/en/right-education. 

7. Wide divide between voters with and without college degrees continues to be a major factor in 

   Trump-era elections. (2025). Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/06/26/voting-patterns-in-the-2024-election/pp-2025-6-26_validated-voters_2-04/. 

8. Zingher, J. N. (2022). TRENDS: Diploma divide: Educational attainment and the realignment of 

   the American electorate. Political Research Quarterly, 75(2), 263–277. https://doi.org/10.1177/10659129221079862.