Union Activists such as:
César Chávez - Folk hero and symbol of hope who organized a union of farm workers.
Chávez attended more than 36 schools before dropping out after eighth grade.
Eugene V. Debs - Apostle of industrial unionism.
Debs was born on Nov. 5, 1855, in Terre Haute, Ind., the son of Marguerite Bettrich and Jean Daniel Debs, Alsatian immigrants and retail grocers. At 16, he left school to work as a paint scraper in the Terre Haute railroad yards and quickly rose to a job as a locomotive fireman.
William Green - Former AFL president who moved the federation toward "social reform unionism."
Born in Coshocton, Ohio, in 1873, into an English and Welsh immigrant coal-mining family, Green began working as an underground coal miner when he was 16.
Mother Jones - "The most dangerous woman in America."
In her early 20s, she moved to Chicago, where she worked as a dressmaker, and then to Memphis, Tenn., where she met and married George Jones, a skilled iron molder and staunch unionist.
Lucy Randolph Mason - Social reformer dedicated to workers' rights and racial justice.
Mason began her social reform work in Richmond, Va., where she had spent her childhood. As a young girl in her 20s, she supported herself by working as a stenographer but devoted much of her free time to volunteer social service work and political activities on behalf of women's suffrage.
A. Philip Randolph - Organized the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and fought discrimination in national defense.
Asa and his brother, James, were superior students. The Randolph brothers attended the Cookman Institute in East Jacksonville, for years the only academic high school for African Americans in Florida. Asa excelled in literature, drama and public speaking; starred on the school's baseball team; sang solos with its choir; and was valedictorian of the 1907 graduating class. After graduation, Randolph worked odd jobs and devoted his time to singing, acting and reading.
None of these people had any post-secondary education yet were major players of the labor movement.
Post-secondary education doesn't always equal progressive politics. There is the Chicago School of Economics, which according to Paul Douglas:
"…I was disconcerted to find that the economic and political conservatives had acquired almost complete dominance over my department and taught that market decisions were always right and profit values the supreme ones… The opinions of my colleagues would have confined government to the eighteenth-century functions of justice, police, and arms, which I thought had been insufficient even for that time and were certainly so for ours. These men would neither use statistical data to develop economic theory nor accept critical analysis of the economic system… (Frank) Knight was now openly hostile, and his disciples seemed to be everywhere. If I stayed, it would be in an unfriendly environment."
There is also conservative post-secondary educational institutes such as: Brigham Young University, Liberty University, Bob Jones University, etc.
While post-secondary education has been a tremendous boon. I really don't care if they have post-secondary education or dropped out of elementary school. What metric we should be using is are people able to see the injustices in the world.