An important point made in the article: Rural students score better on a national preparedness test than urban students. They also graduate high school at higher rates than urban students. Yet a higher percentage of urban students attend college. It’s incumbent on the state universities to recruit these kids.
The tone of the article is that life in rural areas and small towns is dreary and dead end and that rural youth deserve a better lifestyle. With that attitude rural areas will continue to depopulate. Maybe they will be replaced by burned out investment bankers searching for “the simple life”.
Marion county, mentioned in the article, is right next to my county, about 30 minutes away from me. I don’t think our school has had trouble getting teachers(not having enough money for extra teachers is a different story), but math and science teachers aren’t as plentiful around here. Lots of women wind up going back to become elementary teachers so there is usually a surplus of those, as well as social science teachers(which are often coaches).
There is also the fact that some people don’t want to move away and with limited job opportunities it sometimes isn’t worth it to have a degree. When I went to college, I fully anticipated living somewhere else but wound up moving back here after starting a family. It’s a great place to live, but there is of course a tradeoff involved, you gain things and lose things.
Personal satisfaction? Growth? You know, EDUCATION? Not job training? Not to mention the fact that farm kids an in fact learn more about agriculture in college?
In other countries (other than the US) where the children of farmers can afford to go to university, many of them do.
Farming is a difficult job that requires considerable skills in multiple different areas. There are some very smart farmers and very smart children of farmers. I know a bunch of them.
In the US, the way that need based financial aid is computed is a disaster for farmers who want to send their kids anywhere other than their local public in-state university.
I think one aspect that will automatically make college attendance higher among urban than rural kids is that rural kids may have no college they can commute to while urban kids invariably will, and not all families can afford to pay for the room&board experience.
The State of Alaska has always had a hell of a time getting kids from small villages to go to college. The economy up there isn’t as dependent on college graduates as it is elsewhere. They either grew up with a subsistence lifestyle and don’t have the money for college, or they can make enough money fishing, mining, or working in an oil field that they don’t see the need to go to college.
Does this mean being from a rural community should be a greater boost or “hook” in admittance to highly selective schools? Why just public state schools?
It is a hook. Elite universities love to find the ambitious valedictorian from Boondocks High, especially if it’s the first application they ever got from that high school. One of these students became my dear friend in college.
I live in a ‘2 stoplight-town’ where I raised my son from the time he was 7 and in 2nd grade.
I could have chosen a bigger town, but instead I opted for the extremely low cost of living (my mortgage payments are less than $1000 per month for a 2500 sq ft house on a bit less than an acre), the easy commute to work with no traffic (except when there are tractors on the road during planting or harvesting), the lack of crime (I never used to lock my door when I went to work, I started a few years ago because my neighbors are busy-bodies not because I was afraid of crime), and the overall relaxed lifestyle (I often say I get to go to my retreat in the woods at the end of every day).
My son graduated with a class of just under 100 students - there were 8 students in his calc AB class (the only AP class offered at his school), he says he didn’t learn anything in physics, and the biology teacher skipped the chapters on evolution since he didn’t share those beliefs.
But about half of the community did value education and push their children for better lives and of my son’s small graduating class he and another student both now have engineering degrees, another has a computer science degree, a few got biology degrees - one of whom is now in med school…
But the other half of the community almost seems resentful of education or anyone who is educated. I frequently hear people refer to engineers in a mocking tone and am regularly told that engineers lack common sense and are overpaid. I’ve had several people say something similar to ‘so you’re one of those college people.’ to me. I’ve heard parents say of their 12 year old that they’re not cut out for college. I’ve heard parents say that college isn’t worth the cost and that their kids are just going to get jobs when they graduate.
It sounds about right that such a high percentage don’t aspire to college because from my experience it’s about that percent that are raised to not put any value on it.
@TomSrOfBoston : Our kids would totally agree with your first-sentence summation about rural/small-town life. It’s also a fact that colleges/universities are not able to accept these students if they don’t first apply, and many don’t.
Despite the desire of some students and colleges to do away with the ACT and SAT exams, I feel they serve an important role for those college-bound students graduating from small high schools. It is difficult for admissions directors to evaluate the academic quality of applicants in a graduating class of just 30 or 40 students, and when they are the first from that school to apply. This is especially true when it might be the superintendent of schools who has to be roped into teaching the rarely-offered section of Advanced Algebra or Pre-Calculus.
@jrcsmom - a “two stop light” town is what they call the “big city” where my in-laws live It’s been about a decade, but they did get a blinking light over the stop sign in town.
But I hear you on the resentment of higher education. My DH had less than 50 in his graduating class (and the school district covers a large geographical area to get that many). He never told anyone at his high school reunion that he has a master’s degree. He’s uncomfortable with it. I have a niece who wanted to go to a prestigious OOS school, but my sister-in-law was able to “talk some sense in to her” and get her to go to the state school not too far from home. Said niece has graduated, lives at home and works 3 part time jobs to get by. I suspect the outcome might have been different had she gone to another school. They’re a high need family and I suspect that with two in college for 3 of her 4 years, it might have been quite affordable to go out of state. But that option isn’t ever discussed, yet alone encouraged.
I live in rural Wisconsin. Not such a tiny town as above, but no way anyone here is doing science research after school to pump up their ECs.
I think the rural hook might be overstated. I haven’t seen any kids accepted to what might be considered “top” schools by the college confidential crowd. Granted, few apply. But this is a county seat, and most of the kids who are applying have highly educated parents (doctors, lawyers, community college professors and/or immigrant parents). I’m not sure they are really seen as rural like a kid with uneducated parents might be. There is a divide in HS already between farm and town kids. I’ve written this before on CC, but the goal of the HS is to prepare the top kids for UW Madison. They do a good job with that. Anything beyond or different is just not the focus.
I bet few students apply to Bowdoin or Davidson or Harvey Mudd though, or even Grinnell and Carleton which are nearby. Those colleges would totally give them a boost if that environment is made clear.
@Booajo, your town sounds like where I grew up (in Wisconsin). There was a divide not only between farm and town kids but also between town and gown adults, because of the UW campus in the city.
I now live in a suburb of Madison with a highly ranked high school, and I’d guess the majority of the college-bound students here are bound for UW-Madison, too.
67% suburban, 62% urban, 59% rural. Those aren’t massive differences.
I graduated from a rural high school many decades ago and have seen the suburban and urban schools my kids have attended. The experiences are very difference. At a rural school your district has likely invested in Ag (agriculture) and Vo-Tech (vocational-technical) training options. You won’t see these in but a very few suburbs on the fringe of the city. Your school guidance counselors will have a different emphasis - more of certain kinds of events and fewer of others. College (non-sports) recruiters will focus their time on districts most likely to produce students for their schools, so whereas a top high school will be scheduling constant college recruiter visits even from small liberal arts schools a rural district may struggle to get visits from any but state schools, and even then the nearer satellite campuses.
Given these differences the 59%-67% seems if anything too small. Looking at the study notes I think there are factors that overreport the college attendance from rural and underreport from suburban areas. First, this relies on self-reporting - the really weak high schools for college attendance are less likely to report. Second, recruited athletes and attendance at associate degree schools probably inflates the rural number. Third, they are going by the standard definitions of rural and urban, and I don’t fault them for that, however, there are high schools that are “suburban” or “urban” in demographic classifications that are really rural in terms of vocational awareness. Isolated cities in west Texas, for example, like Lubbock and Midland or Greeley, Colorado.
If you are in an affluent suburban high school the assumption is that you and your mates will be heading off to college - even if you’re thinking military (which will be a relatively small percentage except in areas with a military presence) you’re thinking either military college or military-then-college. If you’re not thinking along those lines you’ll be conscious of being different than most of your classmates. If you are in an isolated rural area with lots of agriculture the situation will likely be reversed. Most of your school mates will not be thinking college, and if you are targeting one of the better 4-year schools you’ll be somewhat unusual. There will likely be a teachers and counselors who’ll encourage you - after all they all got 4-year degrees - but you won’t be trading experiences with hundreds of classmates who are pursuing similar aims and you’ll have to reach out to schools yourself instead of them coming to visit you.
It’s been about a decade, but they did get a blinking light over the stop sign in town.