Candace Owens’s pursuit of journalism has a subtle irony. She enrolled at the University of Rhode Island with the kind of ambition that low-income, small-town children typically carry with them—not making an announcement, just making progress. Of all things, journalism. Asking questions, confirming statements, and holding influential people responsible are the cornerstones of this field. Looking back, it’s difficult to ignore how that chapter ended so differently than it must have started.
Born in White Plains, New York, Owens was raised mostly by her grandparents in Stamford, Connecticut, following her parents’ divorce when she was about eleven years old. According to her own description, her grandfather was an important person who was dependable, present, and formative.
She did what teenagers do—run track, cheer at games, and graduate from Stamford High School. However, something that would subtly influence the remainder of her story occurred before she even graduated from high school. When she was seventeen, white male classmates, including the son of then-mayor Dannel Malloy, who would go on to become governor of Connecticut, left her a string of racist and menacing voicemails. The school district was sued by the family. They agreed to pay $37,500.
Something was planted by that incident. Depending on who you ask and when, it may have resulted in trauma, resilience, or both. According to Owens, it played a part in the eating disorder she battled for many years. It’s the kind of wound that doesn’t show up in a tidy manner. She continued it into her junior year of college at Rhode Island, where she was majoring in journalism and probably trying to figure out what she wanted to do for a living.
The student loan then failed. In conversations about her politics, that detail is often overlooked, but it is important. She didn’t leave school because of her grades or her disenchantment with learning. The money stopped, so she left. It’s a commonplace, annoying, and uniquely American reason to drop out of school, yet it completely changed the course of events that followed. In retrospect, it seems almost novelistic that she interned at Vogue in New York after leaving the university without earning her degree. The world of fashion, in short. After that, she worked for a Manhattan-based private equity firm, where she eventually became vice president of administration. It was obvious that she could learn while on the go.
Owens’s education, both formal and informal, is noteworthy because so much of it took place outside of classrooms. She learned something about public exposure and survival from her time at Stamford High School. She learned something about image from Vogue. She learned how organizations truly operate behind their glossy exteriors from the world of private equity. Additionally, she was effectively teaching herself political communication in real time when she started blogging and started a marketing agency called Degree180 in 2015. However, her early posts were critical of Republicans rather than supportive of them.
The official schooling was never completed. Neither a diploma nor a graduation picture are present. And yet here she is, with millions of YouTube followers, a book, a foundation, and a former Daily Wire show. It’s hard to argue that her lack of a degree slowed her down in any quantifiable way, regardless of how one feels about her opinions, which have become much more divisive over time.
It’s still unclear if the commentator she became would be recognized by the journalist she was training to become. Most likely not. However, the tale of how a student loan disruption in Rhode Island ultimately gave rise to one of the most talked-about figures in American conservative media is, at the very least, the kind of story that a competent journalist would find worthwhile.
