While many people take pride in their education, some people are so arrogant that they look down on people whose education is lesser than theirs. They might be college graduates who look down on anyone who didn't go to and/or dropped out of college, students/graduates of prestigious schools who look down on anyone from less prestigious schools, high school graduates who look down on anyone without a high school diploma, among others. They will often brag about their education at every opportunity, assume that anyone with a lower level of education is less intelligent or capable than them, and believe that their status entitles them to respect and success.
These types of characters most commonly appear in workplace settings. They typically look down on co-workers with a less prestigious education, even ones who outrank them, and will often take offense at someone with a lower level of education being in an equal or better position. If they're in a position of authority, they will favor those with a similar education and abuse and/or underestimate employees with lesser education. Oftentimes, these types of employees are simply all talk, coasting by on their educational status but having little to show for it.
While the workplace variant is the most common version, other variants include:
- Snobby in-laws who look down on their relative's spouse due to their lower educational status. Alternatively, they might look down on their spouse's relatives for the same reason.
- Parents that show favoritism towards the sibling with better education.
- Gold Diggers who chase after people with good education under the assumption that they're wealthy and/or guaranteed to become successful.
- Parents disowning their kids for dropping out or not going to a prestigious school.
- Highly educated relatives looking down on their less educated family members.
- People not being invited to weddings because their friends, family, and/or in-laws feel embarrassed to be associated with people with a low level of education.
- Casanova Wannabes who try to use their educational status to impress women.
- Some variants of this type will often put down their less educated rivals as a means of peacocking.
These types of characters often act as a foil to a less educated, but more skilled/experienced person, with the lesson being that one's education doesn't determine one's future or competence.
Differs from Insufferable Genius in that this trope is more about characters who take pride in their educational status, while Insufferable Genius focuses more on people who take pride in their actual intelligence. For example, if a stupid character with a college degree looks down on a smart person who never went to college, it would be this trope.
Sub-Trope of Slobs Versus Snobs. Characters with this mentality often suffer from Small Name, Big Ego and tend to be Know Nothing Know It Alls. They may have A Degree in Useless if their education only qualifies them as an Expert in Underwater Basket Weaving. Sometimes acts as a foil to a Tragic Dropout. Will often look down on people who Never Learned to Read. Compare Education Mama, Academic Alpha Bitch, and Nerdy Bully, who often hold this view. The Phony Degree trope may be invoked if the snobbish character considers the degree from the supposedly "lesser" college as no better than that from a diploma mill. Overlaps with Too Proud for Lowly Work if a person uses their education as an excuse to get out of work that is "beneath them." Compare/Contrast Elite School Means Elite Brain, which these characters believe but the narrative (usually) doesn't. Contrast School Is for Losers, Persecuted Intellectuals, and Anti-Intellectualism for people having negative attitudes towards education.
While some people may act like this in real life, to avoid drama, No Real Life Examples, Please!.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Great Teacher Onizuka: Teshigawara thinks being a Tokyo University graduate makes him smarter and better than everyone else, but if that's the case what is he doing as a high school math teacher? He may be academically gifted but has No Social Skills (not least because he sees almost everyone else as beneath him).
Films — Animated
- South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut: While attending Mr. Mackey's anti-swearing rehabilitation, Gregory protests that he doesn't belong with the other schoolchildren, as he attended Yardale and had a 4.0 GPA. Cartman just says, "You're a fucking faggot, dude."
Films — Live-Action
- In Don't Look Up, the POTUS's bumbling Chief-Of-Staff sneers at Randall and Kate's research because they are from the "less prestigious" Michigan State University while he is Ivy League educated. He also attempts to discredit them by suggesting that if they were really as clever as they think, they would be affiliated with better schools. When he gets the results repeated by Harvard, Yale, and Princeton scientists, he's much quicker to believe them (even though, by then, their options are narrowing).
- Good Will Hunting: when Will and friends go to a student bar and one of them starts chatting up a girl, a male student comes by and starts making fun of Will's friend and his attempts to appear educated by asking him questions about historical economics until Will shows him up by demonstrating both that he understands the topic better than the student, and knows the exact book and page he was quoting.
- Legally Blonde has this as the core of Warner very cruelly dumping Elle at the beginning of the movie, thus causing Elle to apply to Harvard Law School herself in order to subvert the Dumb Blonde stereotype.
- Matilda: Inverted with the Wormwoods (minus Matilda), a family of Anti Intellectuals who don't value education. Zinnia is a Female Misogynist who believes that women should look pretty rather than be educated, even insulting Ms. Honey for focusing on education. Harry Wormwood looks down on college graduates as "hippies and cesspool salesmen." Ms. Honey shuts them up by pointing out that without colleges, there wouldn't be doctors to treat sick people or lawyers to protect people from lawsuits.
Literature
- Into The Broken Lands: The Scholars consider themselves and Scholar-approved sources to be the only credible sources of knowledge. This puts them deep in Know-Nothing Know-It-All territory in the Broken Lands as they repeatedly contradict a local guide with first-hand expertise, undeterred by being proven wrong every time.
- Discworld: The wizards of Unseen University know that there is only one true Wizarding School on the Disc. Brazeneck College is a self-important upstart, Bugrup University is too far away from anywhere that matters to count, and the others that have been implied to exist are all, well, foreign.
- The Magicians:
- In The Magician King, Brakebills graduates look down on hedge-witches for learning their magic through unofficial tutors in safehouses instead of the highly-exclusive magical colleges, even though magic requires so much intelligence and obsession to master that the end results are virtually the same. As such, Quentin ends up accidentally insulting his friend Julia when he refuses to believe that she learned magic from "a bunch of unlicensed losers in a frat house".
- In New Class, Dean Fogg invites a group of young hedge-witches to study at Brakebills in order to improve the school's curriculum (and also to help counter the negative effects of Brakebill's Absurdly Exclusive Recruiting Standards). The response from the established students ranges from awkward diplomacy to outright hostility, with Andy openly disparaging the hedge-witches for learning "pseudo-magical bullshit" in a "hippie commune."
Live-Action TV
- The Big Bang Theory: In addition to being an Insufferable Genius and still somehow a Know-Nothing Know-It-All, Sheldon adds this to his list of vices. He frequently mocks Howard for going to M.I.T. and Leonard for going to Princeton. Of course, Sheldon is not alone in this.
Howard: Like Princeton's a real school?
Sheldon: [laughing] I was going to say the same thing about M.I.T., but it works for Princeton, too! - Blackadder Goes Forth: "General Hospital" sees Blackadder hunting a spy in the field hospital. As part of his investigation, he asks Nurse Mary if her boyfriend went to any of the great British colleges, like Oxford, Cambridge, or Hull. When he later formally accuses her, he points out his Secret Test of Character: that only two of those colleges are "great universities"—to which General Melchett chimes in that "Oxford's a complete dump."note
- Brooklyn Nine-Nine: In "The Bimbo", Jake learns that Holt is regarded by his husband Kevin's academic colleagues, particularly Dean Allistair, as a "working-class bimbo", despite Holt being the most intelligent and cultured of the squad. Part of this is due to his work in the NYPD instead of in academia, and the condescension causes Holt to get flustered when he is around them so he struggles to show how intelligent he really is. Kevin gives a "Reason You Suck" Speech to Allistair at the end of the episode defending how his husband is just as smart as any of them, but uses his intelligence to help people. It also turns out this attitude caused Allistair to miss the fact that Janitor Randy had been stealing artifacts from the department for years, because he never thought a working-class person could outsmart him.
- Frasier: Both Crane brothers hold this sentiment, both having gone to prestigious schools (Harvard and Oxford for Frasier, Yale and Cambridge for Niles) towards just about every institution other than their own. On one occasion the two end up dismissing the advice of another psychiatrist who accurately points out how unhealthy their rivalry is, just because he graduated from a less prestigious university. Likewise, when Niles is going into heart surgery, Frasier is particularly dismissive of his doctor graduating from Stanford "Well, if you must attend school on the West Coast." In the sequel series, Niles' son David reveals his father considers UPenn a "Trade School."
- One episode of Gilligan's Island has the Howells encounter a drama student posing as a feral man-child. To gauge the fellow's education, the Howells present him with a plate of food and some silverware. According to the Howells, starting with the outermost fork means he'd be a Princeton alum while starting with the innermost fork means he'd be a Harvard alum. When the fellow throws his face onto the plate and starts noshing like an animal, Thurston exclaims, "Good Heavens, he's a Yale man!"
- Gilmore Girls: On a show that is half about familial relationships and half about the politics of class, this comes up more and more as Rory becomes more immersed in the world of her wealthy grandparents:
- Emily and Richard are overjoyed to learn that Rory was accepted at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton and make plans to rub it in the face of their friends, whose grandson only got into Brown. Lorelai is also hesitant to invite them to her own college graduation ceremony because she is graduating from a community college; her parents had planned for her to attend Vassar before her Teen Pregnancy got in the way. They attend, but it's awkward.
- Paris, Chilton's Academic Alpha Bitch, mentions a meeting with her academic advisor demanding to switch calculus classes—the teacher she has was educated at Berkley (which she thinks is hippy-ish, accusing him of majoring in math but minoring in bean sprouts), while the one she prefers was educated at MIT. She also has a Heroic BSoD when she is rejected from Harvard, seemingly seeing the other Ivies as inferior; she eventually gets into Harvard medical school and has a triumphant moment of "suck it" satisfaction.
- Gossip Girl: Exaggerated in season 1, where Blair looks down on Serena for applying to Brown.
Serena: Brown is an Ivy League school.
Blair: Everyone knows that the only real Ivies are the holy trinity: Harvard, Yale, and Princeton.
Serena: Well, I know you may find this hard to believe, but not everyone wants to go to Yale because not everyone wants to be Blair Waldorf.
Blair: Not everyone can be. - It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: In "The Gang Gets Analyzed", University of Pennsylvania graduate Dennis sees that Dee's therapist got her degree at the non-Ivy League La Salle University and is condescendingly smug about it, despite the therapist clearly knowing more about psychology than he does.
- M*A*S*H has Major Charles Emerson Winchester III, who was first in his class at Harvard Medical and never lets anyone forget this. He is condescending towards every other doctor on the show but he is particularly condescending to B.J. Hunnicutt for being from California.
- The Suife Life On Deck: Cody is deadset on attending Yale once he graduates high school (it was Harvard before a bad experience with the dean of admissions), to the point he refuses to consider other colleges like Princeton ("the armpit of the Ivy League") or Brown ("a glorified junior college").
- In Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister, Civil Service mandarin Sir Humphrey Appleby is somewhat patronising of his Prime Minister Jim Hacker, because Hacker's degree is from a lesser university than his own Oxbridge.note . And both look down on places like the University of Essex, which they consider to be the bottom rung of British academia.
Music
- Alluded to in the Steely Dan song "Reeling in the Years":
You been tellin' me you're a genius Since you were seventeen In all the time I've known you I still don't know what you mean The weekend at the college Didn't turn out like you planned The things that pass for knowledge I can't understand.
Religion & Mythology
- The Book of Mormon mentions how a previously united society began to become stratified, with accompanying "pride and boastings", according to the people's level of education — which basically correlated to personal wealth.
Video Games
- Exaggerated in Genshin Impact's Sumeru Akademiya, where most of the scholars within — especially the Grand Sage, Azar — would look down on anything that isn't educational or wisdom-provoking (in their eyes, anyways) such as arts.
Web Animation
- ATTACK on MIKA: Marin
holds this attitude towards Hiroshi, her own father. Despite the fact that Hiroshi works hard to ensure that she attends a private middle-school, Marin looks down on him and physically abuses him for not going to high school. Kozue, Hiroshi's wife, also regrets marrying him, stating that she should have chosen a man with better education. Marin knows that Kozue is cheating on Hiroshi with another man and actually expresses excitement at the idea of receiving a new, more educated father. Marin gets her wish when Hiroshi discovers that Marin isn't his daughter and decides to divorce Kozue so that Benta, Marin's real father, can raise her instead. While Benta is a college graduate, he's overweight, bald, and deep in debt.
- Etra chan saw it!:
- Tachibana and his wife Azami look down on Tachibana's younger brother Tokusa for not going to college. When Tokusa starts his own company, they insist that he can't do it because he's a construction worker and only went to high school. When Tachibana decides to build his house on unstable land, Tokusa warns him not to do it. Despite the fact that Tokusa is a professional foundation builder, Tachibana scoffs at his warning simply because Tokusa is only a high school graduate. Just as Tokusa predicted, the house ends up destroyed due to an earthquake.
- Hiiragi is a law student who attends a prestigious college, which he loves to brag about. He has a part-time job at a bar, which he slacks off at, under the excuse that an educated man like him isn't suited to doing physical labor and is more suited to intellectual tasks. When a group of Yakuza come into the bar, Hiiragi insults them. When they are about to beat him, he says that they'll regret beating him because he goes to Etra City Law School, and only manages to avoid a beating because their superior calls them off. He ends up getting fired for his antics, and tries to get revenge by taking a bottle while ranting that his former coworkers and boss are "peasants" who should bow to him because he's an "elite at Etra Uni." Unfortunately for Hiiragi, he gets stopped by the Yakuza from before and gets beaten.
- Tachibana and his wife Azami
- lovekoi manga:
- Toma was a prep-school attendee who was made fun of for only managing to get into a bottom-ranked university. His worst tormentor was Azusa, who, even as an adult, looks down on Toma, to the point where she tries to kick him out of a wedding he was invited to simply because the groom Yusuke is a Harvard graduate, which in Azusa's mind makes Yusuke too good to be friends with Toma. Yusuke gets angry and informs Azusa that Toma is both his friend and a famous and successful painter. When Azusa learns this information, she pulls a one-eighty and shamelessly starts trying to get with Toma.
- Tsurakawa is Yuui's ex-coworker who looked down on him under the assumption that he's a high school dropout, said assumption being based on Yuui's age. At work, Tsurakawa constantly disrespected him while bragging about her college education, to the point where she forged documents in order to take over a project that Yuui was supposed to be in charge of under the assumption that Yuui is too incompetent to do it. At an important client's wedding, Tsurakawa tries to kick him out saying that the wedding is too good for a high-school dropout. When she learns that the CEO's daughter is engaged to Yuui, she laughs and accuses the CEO of hating his daughter for letting her marry a dropout. When the CEO explains that Yuui graduated MIT at eighteen years old and therefore isn't a dropout, Tsurakawa's attitude completely flips and she starts aggressively flirting with Yuui, much to his disgust.
- Toma
- Revenge Films: The managing director's nephew is a disrespectful braggart who thinks that the fact that he graduated from a prestigious university makes him superior to his coworkers and clients. He ends up harming the company when he disrespects Mr. Yusef, an important client, simply because he graduated from a tier 2 university, which in the nephew's mind makes Mr. Yusef too incompetent to work with the company. When Tom explains that Mr. Yusef has been working with the company for a long time, the nephew insults Tom for only graduating from a vocational school. Even after Mr. Yusef proves his competence, the nephew insults Mr. Yusef, calling him "poorly educated," and a "piece of shit" which leads Mr. Yusef to stop doing business with the company.
- Sekai no Fushigi: Kouki dropped out of highschool to take care of his sister Karin after their parents died. While Karin managed to graduate high school, Kouki never went; because of this, Karin's fiance Takeru refuses to allow Kouki to attend the wedding because he doesn't want people to know that he has a high school dropout in his family. While Karin reluctantly agrees at first, she eventually decides not to marry Takeru when she overhears him refusing to change his mind even after Kouki begs him.
- Trouble Busters: These types of characters are common as antagonists; they often include workplace bullies who look down on the less educated protagonist, toxic relatives who view the protagonist as an embarrassment for their lower education, and classist jerks who see the protagonist's lower education as a mark of inferiority.
Webcomics
- Widdershins: Inverted when Ben Thackerey, a lackluster wizard, meets Sidney Malik and goes quiet with insecurity when he hears that Sidney attended the prestigious Wizarding School of Widdershins. Ironically, despite his great talent for magic, Sidney was expelled.
Mal: 'Ow much better's that than where you went?
Wolfe: Now now, Mal, no-one is comparing degrees here, yes?
Web Video
- Apple Texts: These types of antagonists are often used as a foil to a less educated protagonist. Common variants of the trope include:
- Evil in-laws who don't approve of the protagonist's marriage because of the protagonist's lower level of education.
- Incompetent and/or lazy workers who brag about their education and mock the protagonist for their poorer education.
- Parents who favor the protagonist's sibling because of their superior education. Depending on the story, the sibling could be an arrogant jerk, or disgusted by their parents' mistreatment of their sibling.
- Dimension 20 has at least three major high schools in its Fantasy High setting: students of the prestigious Hudol College, a Wizarding School, look down on those who attend the Aguefort Adventuring Academy (where the main cast all attend). Students at both Aguefort and Hudol look down on Mumple High, due to the latter training people in NPC professions (such as innkeepers and merchants) rather than adventurers, to the point where the player characters threaten to make people go to Mumple is a Running Gag in the first season.
Western Animation
- The Boondocks: Wedgie Rudlin is a self-hating black man who loves to brag about going to the historically WASP Harvard and looks down on almost all of his coworkers for it. In the episode "The Uncle Ruckus Reality Show," it's revealed that he doesn't think highly of historically black colleges.
- Family Guy: In "Brian Goes Back to College", Brian is hired as a journalist by Wellesley Shepherdson, editor of the prestigious New Yorker magazine. Seeing a Harvard graduation photo on his new boss' desk, Brian tries to build rapport by saying he's an Ivy League man himself and went to Brown, only for Wellesley to passive-aggressively respond "My incarcerated business partner's retarded gay niece went to Brown". When he then learns that Brian is a college dropout and didn't graduate, he gets outraged, declares "The New Yorker does not employ your kind!" and fires Brian on the spot.
- The Simpsons:
- When Mr. Burns, a proud Yale graduate, goes to prison in "American History X-celent", he's relieved that his cellmate is a mild-mannered businessman and not a hardened criminal. Then he reacts in horror upon learning that he went to Dartmouth and Virginia State ("the public ivy").
- Sideshow Bob is a Yale graduate who is revealed to hold these views in Brother From Another Series, with him referring to Princeton (where his brother Cecil attended) as a "clown college."
