Education is an important tool for increasing social connectivity and ensuring positive social diversity. In fact, modern public education is widely considered a tool for increasing social ties, with a primary reason for public education policies being their social value. Affirmative action remains prominent at public colleges and universities because the courts have deemed it a tool for enhancing social connectivity: People develop better social bonds and learn to accept diversity when educational environments contain people of different groups. Theoretically, the more time you spend in public education the more experience you will have in developing successful interactions with people of other races, religions, national origins, and socioeconomic backgrounds. 

Many Americans first develop friendships with people of differing backgrounds during college, particularly if they attend large state schools. Such institutions absorb thousands of students from diverse backgrounds and force them to interact, often in close quarters such as in dormitories. Students quickly learn how to adapt to living and learning with people of different backgrounds. Whether they want to or not, college students are often forced out of their respective “comfort zones” and required to interact with others whom they might not have befriended as teens.

Consequently, a lack of education, especially higher education, allows people to avoid the challenges of learning to interact with others from different backgrounds. People who have minimal education may only have to interact with a small group of familiar individuals, such as friends from elementary school or junior high, and are never forced to develop coping skills. An individual who does not go on to college, especially if he or she attends a small high school, may lack social skills related to communicating with, or developing an understanding of, people from diverse backgrounds.

A social chasm then develops, with college-educated people possibly having developed more elaborate social skills than people who did not pursue higher education. Those who did not attend college are then, perhaps unfairly, viewed as less able to work successfully with others from differing backgrounds, perpetuating negative stereotypes of small-town natives as afraid of, or less able to cope with, diversity. They may be relegated to work in jobs that do not require working directly with the public, such as “back room” tasks like working behind-the-scenes or in menial roles. People who are deemed to have better social skills, such as people who attended public universities with diverse student populations, are automatically considered first for more prestigious jobs that involve working directly with customers or clients.

Lack of education may create a social chasm where people are automatically judged based on assumed social ability and coping skills, with college-educated individuals being preferred for jobs requiring interpersonal communication. Less educated individuals may be treated, perhaps subconsciously, as less valuable due to a perceived lack of interpersonal communication fluency. This created a two-tiered employment system, setting up a chasm that is difficult to cross.