This came up in another thread about something else…
What are the largest populations in the US without a public university in reasonable commuting range that is not highly selective? I.e. where someone would have to find a place to live near the school if s/he attended in-person (rather than through on-line or distance education), likely raising the cost compared to being able to commute from where s/he lived while attending high school or community college.
“Not highly selective” means that frosh admission is likely or assured in most majors for an applicant with a 3.0-3.3 high school GPA and 1100-1200 SAT or 22-25 ACT, or transfer admission is likely or assured in most majors for an applicant with a 2.7-3.0 community college GPA.
Wyoming only has one university for the entire state, in Laramie. There are some community colleges, and there are a few satellite campuses with both online and classrooms. Most student at some point spend time in Laramie. Many students in the NW part of the state live closer to a college in Idaho or Montana than to Laramie.
For “reasonable commuting range”, use your own judgment, but note that 60 minutes is about the 92nd percentile in commute times, and 90 minutes is about the 97th percentile in commute times.
Even here in the NE, there are lots of places that are not within an hour drive of a 4-year public college. The report noted seems to include community college, which would reduce the physical deserts significantly in densely populated areas. Think of upstate NY or even places in NJ or Connecticut. Especially if you mean each way (3 hours a day of driving seems hard to do unless it is only once or twice a week). That would also assume access to a decent car and the ability to run and maintain it.
San Diego. We have UC San Diego and San Diego State but both are increasingly competitive. 3.0’s don’t have a chance at either.
CSU San Marcos is a good hour away from central San Diego and even farther for anyone in the wide spread suburbs and that’s not accounting for traffic. It’s not a reasonable to commute and high housing costs add to the problem.
We do have excellent community colleges though UCSD ended its guaranteed transfer program years ago. SDSU still has one but the gpa qualifications vary by major.
The map at https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/three-million-americans-are-disconnected-higher-education defines a physical education desert as one where there is at most one community college within 25 miles in the category of broad access public schools. I.e. if there are two community colleges but no four year public schools, it is not a physical education desert, even though students wanting to complete bachelor’s degrees need to move away or make a longer commute.
An example would be Fairfield (California), which is not what they define as an educational desert, but the nearest broad access four year public schools are considerably more than 25 miles away (SSU, CSUSac, SFSU, CSUEB are all more than 40 miles and more than 45 minutes commuting time; not counting UCB and UCD, which are closer (but still more than 25 miles away) but highly selective).
Also, it somehow lists Chico (California) as a physical education desert, despite the existence of CSU Chico right there.
There is an abundance of public, four-year colleges in upstate NY. Many are within an hour’s drive from any location in the state. SUNY colleges were placed/acquired for this exact purpose.
The thread title states “largest populations without…”. Rural areas are different- they are not population centers. I do not consider an hour to be a reasonable commute for college. It works for earning money because those who do it figure the cost/benefit ratio is there. I do not believe college has to be within commuting distance. A great part of the experience is being on campus for more than classes. College is not for everyone, nor should it be.
Many students and families find it more difficult to afford college if it is out of commuting range, requiring higher living expenses for the student to live near campus than the costs of living with parents and commuting. Financial reality is probably the big reason many college students live with their parents and commute to nearby colleges, even if they desire to attend a different college.
Should students who cannot afford college away from home be excluded on that basis from college and its academic and preprofessional benefits, even though they may not get the live-on-campus benefits?
And what about those kids who are academically cut out for college but can’t afford room and board? That was certainly the reason why I lived at home rather than away at school. Seems kind of harsh to say if you can’t afford to live at school then a college education is not for you.
It’s a great ideal that every student should be on campus for more than classes, but there are those of us who had to live at home and work off-campus jobs just to be able to pay for lab fees and textbooks. And what about those students who can only go to school part-time because of other obligations?
Kids in these “educational deserts” are already missing out on dual-enrollment opportunities so many families take for granted - can’t dual-enroll if the nearest campus is a 2 hour round trip.
I never said less than ideal circumstances mean not going to college. Most colleges work for most students. The top (think gifted) students deserve more. I was on a very tight budget for college- so much better being on campus 24/7 than the friend who walked from her house (she missed out on the night stuff- her parents would have been horrified if we rang their doorbell after 10 pm).
Except for Tennessee State, which is a HBCU, I was surprised that there was no public university in Nashville. The closest one is Middle Tennessee State, where my daughter went, which is about 35 miles away from downtown. She did the drive from Nashville multiple times a week.
Des Moines has a private university (Drake) and a decent community college. It is about a 35-40 minute drive from Iowa State with no public transportation options.
She got a degree in Nutrition and Food Science. It looks like Tennessee State has a program in Food Biosciences and Technology. Not sure how much they overlap.
DC’s only public is also a HBCU. Given this lack of options, students in DC get up to $10,000 per year through DCTAG to offset the cost of OOS tuition at other public universities.
Another candidate in California would be the adjoining “Santa Maria-Santa Barbara” and “San Luis Obispo-Paso Robles-Arroyo Grande” Metropolitan Statistical Areas. In other words, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo Counties, with a combined population of around 750,000. The region has two existing public universities, UC Santa Barbara and Cal Poly SLO, but neither of them are accessible to B students.
You could maybe argue that the southern part of Santa Barbara County is within commuting distance of CSU Channel Islands in Ventura County, but there are still no practical public alternatives for northern SB County or SLO County. In practice, the local community colleges (like Allan Hancock or Cuesta) partner with non-local, non-selective private schools (like Brandman U, or U of La Verne). The privates offer the final two years of popular bachelor’s degrees through satellite programs on the campuses of the CCs. So accessible bachelor’s degrees are available – but not through a “public university”, only through a hybrid CC/private partnership. It’s an awkward arrangement that probably creates unnecessary hassle and expense for students. It would be better (in my opinion) to simply authorize the CCs to grant four-year degrees in places where the CSUs and UCs are no longer accessible.
In fact, it might not be a bad idea to authorize all of the California CCs to grant four-year degrees. It’s pretty clear that the growth of the CSU and UC systems has been insufficient to keep up with the surging demand for undergraduate education in California. One way to provide more supply would be to turn, say, 75 or 100 CCCs into four-year schools. There would obviously be costs to expand CCC facilities and to hire more faculty, but it still seems like this would be faster and cheaper than trying to build new CSU or UC campuses.
Not sure why UDC being a HBCU means that it has to be a “lack of options”, unless you mean that most non-black students do not want to attend a college with a high black population.
UDC’s selection of majors may be more of a limitation for many liberal arts students (e.g. no major in economics, philosophy, or physics, for example), though it does have many of the common pre-professional majors (e.g. BArch, accounting, business, civil/electrical/mechanical engineering, computer science, elementary education, social work): https://www.udc.edu/programs/bachelors/
But the VA/MD public universities closest to Washington, DC (GMU and UMCP) are probably too selective to be “broad access” for the purpose of this thread, even if DCTAG may help with the costs (but $10,000 is only about half of the out-of-state extra tuition at GMU and UMCP).