Would you date/marry a man without higher education?

[bunny85]

Just that really. If everything else was great, would it be a deal breaker for you? Let's say a man who only finished high school- no college, no uni. Would you?

[quote JonHammIsMyJamm]@multivac, I don’t know if you are reading my posts but I don’t actually think it is that important. People can have all kinds of criteria for potential romantic partners, just because I don’t think it’s important doesn’t mean I’d consider someone who did think it was important, foolish.[/quote]
Yes, my sarcasm wasn't aimed at you

I’m educated to post graduate level. My DH has his own successful building company and left school to work on building sites before he got to even GCSE age. He earns a lot more than I do and he is clever and funny and well read. He is also a good judge of character and has great social skills, as well as being very very kind. He is incredibly sexy when it comes to the fact that he can fix and handle almost anything. He has an eye for things that I just don’t, and great attention to detail.

I went to university with some people who scraped by in terms of marks to achieve their degrees (a second class degree certainly doesn’t equal “intelligent” or even “ambitious”) and were small minded, daft individuals, both before and after their degrees.

It means little in terms of the type of partner someone will make.

I noticed a PP say that all her friends are university educated, so a partner who wasn’t would feel out of place. I have been in a group like that, in my first marriage, and don’t miss it, or the groundhog day dinner parties that were part of it.

The only thing that bothers me is that my DH sometimes thinks he is not good enough, because of his lack of academic qualifications, and needs to “better him” himself.

There is nothing to ‘better’.

I taught post 16 students who were preparing for university, and it was all “bums on seats because we need the funding” and passing students who weren’t really worthy of a pass, in order to meet targets.

Those same students will have been churned out, three years later, at the other end of the university process, hopefully having met the targets, and clutching a certificate to prove it. They’ll have a bit of life experience behind them and will have proved that they can commit to something for a decent period of time and that they have the ability to follow instructions and meet deadlines. They won’t be ‘better’ or more interesting people for it though.

The issue here is not that people have different criteria. It's the assumptions that are attached to the existence or not of a degree certificate that I find strange. 'Sporty', 'likes books', 'ambtious', 'high earning potential', 'taller than me' - I might not share those priorities, but each to their own. 'Is a graduate', though, tells you nothing about a person other than that they have completed and passed a particular course of study. Which seems like a really odd reason to rule out a relationship if, as the OP suggests, 'everything else is great'.

Sorry, @multivac. My radar is clearly buggered

My dp finished high school, dropped out of college at 17 because he didn't like it. Didn't like that he had to study 2 other subjects he had no interest in. I was the same tbh but I finished it. Didn't bother me. He's 24 now and has nearly finished his 1st year in uni studying law and has done very well. I'm proud of him, but it doesn't make a difference to how I feel about him.
I don't think people who go to uni and college are better. I dated a junior doctor before I met dp, he was very boring and quite rude tbh. Unfeeling, no empathy. I think he had problems with feelings and expressing emotion which is linked to intelligence a lot of the time.

Yes. I married one. He's now a 6 figure salary earning director of a large company.
Also got 100% on one of his further maths a level papers.
You would not believe the amount of people that have in the past automatically render him useless as soon as he mentions no degree. Ridiculous.

Basing a relationship on one aspect of a person is never a good idea imo.

Yes. I married one. He's now a 6 figure salary earning director of a large company. Also got 100% on one of his further maths a level papers.

How predictable. So many millionaire genius men in one thread!

You would not believe the amount of people that have in the past automatically render him useless as soon as he mentions no degree. Ridiculous.

Clearly not on here. There are enough millionaire genius entrepreneurs to form a small army.

Still wouldn't want one though. I'm honestly more inspired by hearing about all these women who earn 6 figures as company directors despite having no qualifications, who are supported by their husbands, and do something more than boast about how much their husbands earn. Does marrying a man with no qualifications do this to them? A need to constantly prove their man is good enough?

Boasting that your husband makes x amount despite of lack of higher education is not only crude but hugely misses the point of education. It perfectly illustrates the difference of those who value education and those who value the £.

Higher education is not a means to an end; it's not only of value if it's an oxbridge maths or law degree. Student debt is actually a graduate tax and the best type of debt to have.

@GreenlandTheMovie

Yes. I married one. He's now a 6 figure salary earning director of a large company. Also got 100% on one of his further maths a level papers.

How predictable. So many millionaire genius men in one thread!

You would not believe the amount of people that have in the past automatically render him useless as soon as he mentions no degree. Ridiculous.

Clearly not on here. There are enough millionaire genius entrepreneurs to form a small army.

Still wouldn't want one though. I'm honestly more inspired by hearing about all these women who earn 6 figures as company directors despite having no qualifications, who are supported by their husbands, and do something more than boast about how much their husbands earn. Does marrying a man with no qualifications do this to them? A need to constantly prove their man is good enough?

You really only do engage with the posts that reinforce your prejudices, don't you? Still, as I say, as long as you are happy, that's the main thing. God, I really wouldn't fancy the dating treadmill now, with or without arbitrary success criteria.

Me and husband both have degrees. However more and more people are opting for apprenterships these days

Wow, such disdain for those without degrees on this thread. How sad.

My boyfriend doesn’t have a degree. Nor is he a millionaire, sadly! He works a minimum wage job....

He’s plenty bright enough though- I think he’s a lot cleverer than me, but just didn’t come from a background where a degree was an option. (I have one). Neither his qualifications nor his earning potential make any difference to me. Just want to be happy with a nice bloke really!

Yes and I have done in the past before meeting my DH.
I dated based on interests, how well I got along with them, conversation etc not education.

One ex BF was very threatened by me having a degree and a masters would always bring up in a argument that I thought I was so clever because of my bits of paper..... Never the case just his own insecurities so the question also goes both ways!

@GreenlandTheMovie what an odd reply. I earned the same as my dh before I had dc.
The OP asked if people would date people without a degree and I couldn't understand where she was coming from.
Did she mean a dp who was not smart, not earning enough not enough potential earning power? Regardless it's a bit narrow minded to date someone on only one aspect of a person.

I wanted to point out both a degree means FA these days most of the time unless it's to embellish a CV (once upon a time they were a lot more respected) and that a fair amount of people still judge having a degree as a marker of being a certain 'type'

My dh is not a millionaire genius entrepreneur he's just a man who worked his way up in a company and is employed as a director now. I am just a woman who likes his attributes and saw past the lack of a degree and cannot imagine not saying someone for this reason.

@Woeismypants how is it crude? We are still educated. You don't need a degree to be educated, only to show off to others that you are. Our dc are in private school we value education.
He has no degree. I'm glad I didn't skip over him for this reason.

fluffyunicornblanket @GreenlandTheMovie what an odd reply. I earned the same as my dh before I had dc.

Its not in the least bit odd. Its well known that women are affected by the glass ceiling, and its dispiriting to read so many women showing off about their husband's high earnings (and there have been many, many similar posts) while at the same time pointing out that the man earns much more than them despite them having degrees, and not even questioning it.

Its also odd to read such disdain for degrees; my ex was an engineer and you couldn't do his job without a degree no matter how good - you wouldn't pass beyond a certain grade. And how anyone could do complex algorithms while programming in the most advanced languages without a degree in it isn't plausible. I can't do my career at all without a degree.

I can only think that the men without degrees that mumsnetters are describing in this thread must be an awful lot nicer and better in every way than the men without degrees I meet. I've just met a lot of really rough, vulgar, controlling and unpleasant men outwith my usual circles. Even the few that seemed nice, I could tell that they would bore me in a very short time. I like going to the opera and the ballet, and learning foreign languages and talking in them, and discussing comparative European business cultures. I go on holiday to summer schools to learn another language, one year I studied Roman architecture. That would go over a lot of mens' heads and they would think I was a weirdo. I can't really see me going down the football, or drinking in the house before going out to the pub (pre-covid, was suggested to me, I blocked him), I did all that when I was a student.

In no way could I contemplate dating any of them - it would be a disaster. And dating within your own social circle is really quite normal - in Scandinavia and some northern European countries, you just do not date outwith it at all really. If necessary, you widen your social circle.

Thinking of the wealthy people I know - its a mixture of educated professionals, trust fund kids and people who own their own businesses (some of whom have degrees). Still couldn't date the richer business owners types without degrees as for some reason the ones I know are quite crude. I've got one pursuing me at the moment and he would make my life a misery as he is so controlling, a heavy smoker and just chaotic in the way he leads his life, and a bit of a user. Lucky mumsnetters to know such cultured, high earning men without degrees. The few that I know are pretty awful and are lucky to have very tolerant wives. Perhaps the good ones are snapped up very, very early.

I can only think that the men without degrees that mumsnetters are describing in this thread must be an awful lot nicer and better in every way than the men without degrees I meet.

Very much sounds like it, doesn't it? Maybe that's why they are in long term relationships?

@shamalidacdak

Yes if he was intelligent and well read.

That and prepared to progress.

Yes

@Flatpackback

I’ve met some super thick, barely literate people with degrees

This comment says way more about you than these apparently super-thick people with a degree.

And they are people you've "met" so maybe take time to actually know people before being willing to insult them so freely.

@bunny85

The reason for my question: had a chat with a friend the other day and she said most women wouldn't marry a man who wasn't well educated and her own parents wouldn't even approve it. So I asked here out of curiosity, to understand whether it's just me who's ok with it or she's wrong.

Sounds like you need a better filter on your friends! What a ridiculous narrow minded generalisation to make, how does she even know what "most women" would do. She sounds like she's straight out of the 1950s, to need her parents' approval for her choice in partner.

Fwiw, my DH doesn't have a degree, but you can ask him literally anything on WWI and II, the Natural World, aviation, economics and world politics and world geography and he'll always be able to answer it. Plus he doesn't realise how awesome that makes him!

Also the modern degree includes about as much knowledge on a given subject as you can fit on a postage stamp. Having a degree is more about teaching techniques for critical analysis, organised thinking, and how to create a reasoned argument on a topic than it is about accumulation of facts. So having a degree says only a limited amount about a person's IQ.

I have a PhD. Other half didn't even do A Levels. But he is loving, funny, practical and incredibly intelligent. Set up his own business at 19 which has grown exponentially and which is still going now he is 35. No way I could do that. Being bookish isn't everything.

I’m the less educated in my relationship. My partner has a degree and a good civil service job.

I’m fairly intelligent, I had good A-levels but chose my horse over uni. I now have a career in the emergency services. A degree wouldn’t of helped me get here and even if I’d gone to uni, I think I would of wound up here anyway. I’ve been nominated for the fast track promotion scheme which, if I get in, will make me a high earner. I don’t think my partner thought twice about dating me when she found out I don’t have a degree.

I’m still intelligent, I still have ambition, I have a good, meaningful career and good prospects ahead. I just chose a different way.

I have two degrees. Married a man without one and it’s been years of bliss.