Dating someone much more educated than you?

I’m educated, work in a Global Senior role. OH is not educated and operates cranes. I significantly out earn him to the point he’s making tracks at becoming a stay at home dog dad in the near future (suits me - I hate looking after the house 😂)

It’s never ever been a problem for us. We understand stress and hard work looks different for each of us. We have a shared sense of humour and he is the ying to my yang. Feck being with someone who’s brain is as busy and frantic as mine!

We level eachother out - he is massively pragmatic and helps balance me when I have a tendency to think the world is ending over nonsense. I’m a strategic thinker with a ‘big picture’ sense of sight and emotional intelligence that has come from my education and professional roles, which he’s leaned on when having to deal with family matters.

If it’s the right person, it’s the right person. Regardless of intelligence.

Big educational gap between us, been together 45 years. Never caused us any problems but the comments from people we hardly knew you wouldn't believe. My favourite was "How do you talk to each other.".

Yes anyone who makes it to professor level these days has to demonstrate spme serious team management and budgeting chops. If she is in STEM she may well manage a budget in the hundreds of thousands.

Score! 💪🏼

I think that's a bit harsh, I think the point is he's not after her for the money that she may make by being more educated!

I don't think educational levels is necessarily a barrier but whether you feel you're evenly matched in terms of interests (which you obviously are at least with tennis) and whether you can keep a conversation going.

Are you otherwise similar in terms of outlook/values etc? I think that's usually more important than educational level (but is sometimes correlated)

Sure. Plus anyone who still thinks academia exists in some ivory tower where people sit about thinking Deep Thoughts, dressing eccentrically and demonstrating an eggheaded inability to tie their own shoelaces might want to get better informed. You need to produce peer-reviewed research at a competitive level, teach, supervise, examine, be regularly successful in pitching for funding and administer large amounts of funding once awarded, host conferences, edit journals, supervise postgraduates, act as an external examiner, plus you do a large amount of managing post-docs and colleagues, running public engagement events, disseminating research outside of the university, general admin, running committees etc.

It’s not going to work, OP. You’re already denigrating her work, you seem to think your earnings are some kind of gotcha, and the fact that have have friends you yourself admit are stupid conspiracy theorists doesn’t suggest any kind of match.

@Mirabai, if you were single (and we were lesbians), I’d be absolutely up for that date…

Just saw that. My mistake 🙌

She could be earning anything from 75k-350k in her job, but don't let that put you off!

Agree with the two previous comments, and the rowdy mates would put me right off.

Totally agree with your comment @Catza.

The mismatch in education was never objectively a problem for me in a previous relationship but the constant comments about 'the real world' and 'you couldn't cope with the BS I do' 'university of life' etc. He also had little interest in my research or areas of expertise and I wanted to be able to talk about these. Deal breaker.

Someone else said this, I couldn't do her job but she'd have no chance of dealing with the BS I have to put up with each day hahaha.

I am going to offer some gentle projection here because you very much beginning to sound like my ex. We were quite mismatched education-wise although he is not a silly man. But, after a brilliant start to the relationship, it became apparent that we have vastly different interests and aspirations. After three years, he barely knew what my job was because, as you, he was simply not interested. But he would wax lyrical about his construction business like it was going out of fashion.
Then resentment set in because what I was doing wasn't seen as serious and he was the one who was coming home exhausted after a day of work and "you couldn't possibly imagine what it is like to do the job that I do" was thrown as an insult every time something wasn't to his liking.
He was also incredibly set in his views and close-minded. I like to approach a debate from an informed position. He would just shout louder. Any gentle suggestion to look up facts, or do a bit of reading on a subject would be dismissed.
He is a good, solid, kind man but a relationship with him was lonely and exhausting. We simply didn't have any points of connection. Sex and F1 on Sundays only get you so far. And once the racing season is over and sex looses it's novelty value, you are not going to enjoy hearing about her research and she is not going to be trilled to watch yet another "drive fast and shoot" film.
You already mentioned several times that you have no interest in her work and, for an academic, this is a non-starter.

I wouldn’t consider myself particularly well educated (got a degree but that’s it) but I’ve had relationships with people with all sorts of edu action levels. The important thing for me would be are you interested in the world and people and how things tick. Unfortunately sometimes people who aren’t educated can come across as ‘dull’ - just football/love island and the pub and the people they’ve always known. That would be the turn off for me.

Education matters far less than intelligence. My partner is not as well educated as me because he chose to leave school and get a job rather than go to uni. That doesn't stop him being my intellectual equal. If you are a similar level when it comes to the ability to grasp things, reason, problem solve, both have interest and curiosity about the world and emotional intelligence, the fact she chose to remain in academia for a long time while you gained a different type of experience shouldn't matter. However, she is a unique person who none of us know and could be attracted or not to you based on lots of variables. Ask her. As long as you keep it light and casual and accept rejection if it comes with good grace then it shouldn't be awkward.

DH left school at 16. I have two Masters and I'm doing a doctorate. He earns 3x my salary.

Someone's either right for you, or they're not.

My fellow girl guide leader is a gardener and is married to a lovely scout leader with a PhD.

@LemonSheep just ask her on a date.

Dh and I met via OLD. I have a degree he has nothing post 16. I have had far more successful a career although following having had dd I took a massive step back and have settled in a mid level admin job so we earn similar amounts.

Honestly, if she gives a toss about your education level then she isn't the woman you think/hope she is.

Education level is not an indication of intelligence.

I am educated and I consider intelligence a must in a partner, but they don't have much to do with each other. In the adult world, intelligence as about openness and curiosity about the rest of the world, and the ability to think critically. I want to be able to discuss art, literature, music and current affairs with my partner - but you don't need a degree to say interesting things about any of those topics.

The more education you have the more you realise how much you don't know, too. DP and I both have Oxbridge degrees but very different ones and we are both total ignoramuses about the other's discipline. It's a running joke that he hasn't heard of Deleuze and Guattari and I find basic physics incomprehensible.

Also, the most stupid and incurious people I've ever met have definitely all been Oxbridge grads. The arrogant ones who were high on their own book-smarts and never got out of the bubble of People Like Them.

If your conversations with this woman are already going swimmingly then that's a good sign that the education gulf won't matter in the slightest. Plus tennis is a great thing to share, it's so involving and you'll be able to discuss backhand technique endlessly with each other (and have someone to moan to about your serve letting you down).

No harm in asking OP, she can only say no. Obviously there are people who care about educational background though. I had an elderly widowed neighbour who I helped to put an ad in the lonely hearts column back in the day. She was an amazing person, incredibly stylish, very well read, had travelled lots and seen many corners of the world. She had been a short hand typist and worked in different countries as a trailing spouse. She got into a relationship with a widower of a similar age, who had been a university lecturer, as had his late wife. They were good company for each other, used to travel together and were very much in a relationship.
Ten years later, he visited his daughter in NZ for one month and she heard nothing from him, which was very unusual and she was trying his mobile, but she had been blocked. A letter arrived shortly after to say he was finishing with her, and that he had found someone else who was better matched as she had been to university. They were all approaching 80 by this stage!

I have three degrees and DP does a manual job. He’s smart, funny, kind, and bloody good fun. He’s almost the most decent individual I’ve ever met. He has lots of interests and his friends are nice, and he gets on great with my friends (most from Uni) who are also nice, down to earth people.

Compatibility is down to more than education level. Ask her for a drink.

You don't have the academics but you have business intelligence. Not everything comes from books. I say this as someone with 3 degrees. I find ambition and go getting attractive. I'm sure I'm not alone. Don't get me wrong, someone who is stupid and I mean a bigot, can't spell, has no interests at all...then that would be different.

Well, I’m only speaking for myself, but as I’m an academic with two Oxford degrees, it would be unlikely to work for me, unless the OP was someone who read a lot, which I assume he would have mentioned.

No we don't. What we do know is that not everyone wants the same things because of their education.

I think asking her for a low key coffee or lunch is the way to go. Gauge her response from there. You sound like a decent man to me and that is a big plus.

Go for it. It may or may not work out but you don't get anywhere by doing nothing. Just don't make a thing about your lack of education - be proud of your achievements. I had two boyfriends prior to getting married (not at the same time!) who constantly talked about not having degrees - presumably because I did and also a post graduate qualification. They clearly had issues about it, but I had none with them - both were intelligent, interesting people, who had good jobs.