From a Thursday New York Times piece on Alaska arch-rivals former governor Sarah Palin and lame-duck Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Tea Bagged):
They represent very different versions of Alaska. Ms. Palin grew up in Wasilla, where development dead-ends and some of the most remote places in America begin. Her father was a schoolteacher, but she earned only a bachelor’s degree after hopscotching from college to college.
Really? Earned only a bachelor’s degree? Sheesh.
The piece then says this, which is apparently meant to provide context but only serves to reinforce the tin-earred elitism of the Times:
Ms. Murkowski grew up in Fairbanks, graduated from Georgetown University and later earned a law degree.
So that’s it: the threshold of respectability is a law degree, not a mere bachelor’s.
Only in the Times.
Campaign Outsider 
No, the threshold is not a law degree. It’s just that earning a bachelors from a competitive, challenging school, then obtaining a strenuous graduate degree, a law degree, is more difficult, and a greater accomplishment than flitting around from school to school throughout the Pacific Rim and upper west, before accumulating enough credits to get a degree in something. It’s somewhat elitist, in a backhanded way, to sniff that the NYT is elitist for thinking so.
I’d agree with you 100%, cj, if it weren’t for that “only.”
I can accept that point. Who knows, maybe the NYT does, too after thinking about it. I know I often do after writing, but I’m not a professional journalist.