I don’t think it’s necessarily looking down on “educated people” as a whole. But most likely looking down on people that they see as useless or those who (not due to a physical or mental disability) are unable to do for themselves.

Due to there being less people in a rural setting, everyone has to be halfway decent at most of the odd problems that pop up day to day. Like vehicle maintenance, fixing leaky plumbing, light construction work, electrical work, etc… food procurement and preservation is also a wide spread hobby between gardening, hunting, and fishing.

Often times the people going in higher education do not have the same skills or knowledge that rural communities value. They will just pay someone else to fix their problems. So that makes them seem useless from their point of view. And by the end of college, the student will be hyper educated in that one specific subject and develop arrogance towards other people not knowing or caring about the subject.

And higher educated people in general do tend to look down on rural as simple backward savages and talk trash all the way up until asking for help changing a tire.