By the 2000s, citizens without a college degree were not only looked down upon; in the United States and Western Europe, they were virtually absent from elective office. In the U.S. Congress, 95 percent of House members and 100 percent of senators are college graduates. This means that the credentialed few govern the uncredentialed many. Although about two-thirds of American adults do not have a college degree, only a tiny handful are members of Congress. It has not always been this way. Although the well-educated have always been disproportionately represented in Congress, as recently as the early 1960s, about one-fourth of senators and one-fourth of members of the House were elected despite lacking a college degree. Over the past half-century, Congress has become more diverse with regard to race, ethnicity, and gender, but less diverse with regard to educational credentials and class. One consequence of the diploma divide is that very few members of the working class ever make it to elective office.

Herbert Morrison, leader of the House of Commons and deputy prime minister, had left school at fourteen and risen to prominence through local government, helping create London's public transport system. The health minister, Aneurin Bevan, who had left school at thirteen and worked as a miner in Wales, led the creation of Britain's National Health Service. Attlee's government, considered "the most significant reforming administration of twentieth century Britain," empowered the working classes and, according to his biographer, "set the ethical terms on which Britain's new social contract was founded." Turning Congress and parliaments into the exclusive preserve of the credentialed classes has not made government more effective, but it has made it less representative. It has also alienated working people from mainstream parties, especially those of the center-left, and polarized politics along educational lines. One of the deepest divides in politics today is between those with and those without a college degree.