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Like the above posters pointed out, pursuing higher education's always been strongly discouraged (though this scan would be the first time I've ever actually seen it in print that blatantly). There are the powerful families... the ones who somehow do go to school, have kids who do things that are "bad" (whether more minor like having an aura of unsavoriness or more major like drinking and fornicating) yet somehow get forgiven and have no reproach on their families. Those people can get their higher education without question but those are actually rare. While I've seen and heard of such families, they haven't been consistently in every congregation I was ever in (and I was in a LOT, thanks to moving around a lot growing up). I remember the numerous talks, both at the meetings AND in the assemblies and conventions about the dangers of pursuing higher education. The things they always SAID were the obvious rhetoric about "why waste your time pursuing wordly things when we have so little time before the end; focus on spiritual things (i.e. the ministry work) instead".In my experience what was always unsaid, yet VERY STRONGLY FELT were a few discrete, yet related issues. First, pursuing higher education for the sake of learning makes the implicit statement that you value secular education and are potentially willing to believe in or at least listen to the lies of the world (remember that wordly history and archaeology are so often wrong, wordly science is so often wrong, all secular knowledge except as quoted in the Awake is wrong or at least potentially wrong). Second, pursuing higher education for the sake of having a higher wage-earning potential implies that you don't believe in the immediacy of Armageddon or the last days - ergo, you're not really putting faith in what the faithful and discrete slave is telling us about us being in the absolute last days of the last days. Third, and tied into the higher-education-for-sake-of-earning motivation, OBVIOUSLY, you wouldn't feel the need to get a decent job and make a decent living if you weren't putting material things first - put the kingdom first and god will provide; clothe his followers like the lilies of the field, etc. etc. ad nauseum. Fourth and finally, pursuing higher education for the purpose of acheiving a higher social or socioeconomic status would be showing fear of man and placing value into worldly status which would be an EXTREMELY unacceptable attitude amongst any of Jehoprah's people. While the last point is probably the LEAST likely to EVER be a bona fide motivator for JWs seeking higher education, I can guarantee from listening to people talk that it seemed to always be a given assumption that people who pursued higher education often (if not always) had such a motivation. The thing is that they've gone back-and-forth so many times on this point, but they've always consistently come back to the anti-higher education stance for the simple reason that education makes you think and thinking is inimical to JW theology. My brother and I came from families that had been born and raised "in the truth". We lost everyone we ever knew by walking away from the faith, but we HAD to because we both finally hit a point where we couldn't pretend to believe anymore. It was our inability to stop thinking and our insatiable intellectual curiosity that drove us to learn everything we could - even about the "truth". Reading the bible cover to cover over and over didn't strengthen my faith in the bible, it destroyed it. Sending bears to maul kids to death for making fun of a bald man? Genociding all of humanity AND the animals (how sacred was their bloodlife THEN) in a global flood because people were partying too much? Denying salvation to all the gentiles and thus condemning them to permanent death until the Israelites rejected Jesus and we all got offered salvation thanks to their bad? Women being permanently condemned to second-class status and lifelong subservience and deference just because they were born with different genitalia? Lot's daughters raping him and having his kids? HUH?? Abraham being willing to murder his son because Jehovah told him to? REALLY? JOB! THE WORST STORY IN THE WHOLE BIBLE!!! SO MANY TALKS GIVEN ABOUT JOB'S FAITHFUL EXAMPLE. His children murdrered, all the suffering and torment he was put through, and for what? To prove a point to Satan? Really? Perfect god's perfect justice let him sit back and watch as Satan not only sadistically tortured Job for no reason, but MURDERED HIS CHILDREN. Then, when Job gets his rewards for his faith, he gets ten new kids? WHAT!? Even as a little kid I couldn't help thinking "but why didn't he just resurrect his old kids... no matter how many new kids he had, they'd never be able to replace his old kids... they're different people... they're still dead...". Thinking is the JWs' (and all religions, really) worst enemy. THIS is the TRUE fundamental reason why they hate and will always hate higher education. True; they need professionals. They need lawyers and doctors and even scholars that are familiar with ancient languages and the archaeological and historical context of the times that biblical events took place in to properly translate and understand the ancient texts. The need for educated professionals though will NEVER outweigh the need for an uneducated, mentally pliant mass of people who not only don't question whatever they're told, but lack the critical thinking skills to do so were they ever so inclined.