One Reason Rural Students Don’t Go To College: Colleges Don’t Go To Them
The sunrise in rural central Michigan reveals a landscape of neatly divided cornfields crossed by ditches and wooded creeks. But few of the sleepy teenagers on the school bus from Maple Valley Junior-Senior High School likely noticed this scene on their hour drive to Grand Rapids.
They set out from their tiny school district of about 1,000 students, heading to the closest big city for a college recruiting fair. About 151 colleges and universities were waiting.
The students, from Nashville and Vermontville, Mich., were going to the recruiters because few recruiters come to see them.
For urban and suburban students, it’s common to have college recruiters visit their schools — maybe they set up a booth in the lunchroom, or talk with students during an English class. But recruiters rarely go to small, rural schools like Maple Valley, which serves fewer than 450 seventh- through 12th-graders.
“When we think about an urban high school, a college recruiter can hit 1,500 students at a time,” says Andrew Koricich, a professor of education at Appalachian State University. “To do that in a rural area, you may have to go to 10 high schools.”
Rural households also have lower incomes than urban and suburban ones, the Census Bureau reports, meaning that rural students are less profitable for colleges, which often have to offer them financial aid.
“People tend to overlook the rural areas. I think it’s kind of disappointing because some able students could get looked over,” says David Hochstetler, one of the Maple Valley students riding the bus to Grand Rapids. He’s interested in pursuing engineering or computer science in college.
One recent study by researchers at UCLA and the University of Arizona found public high schools in affluent areas receive more college recruiter visits than schools in less affluent areas. Those researchers also found recruiters from private colleges concentrate disproportionately on private schools. Rural areas usually have neither wealthy families nor private schools.
Rural households also have lower incomes than urban and suburban ones, the Census Bureau reports, meaning that rural students are less profitable for colleges, which often have to offer them financial aid.
“People tend to overlook the rural areas. I think it’s kind of disappointing because some able students could get looked over,” says David Hochstetler, one of the Maple Valley students riding the bus to Grand Rapids. He’s interested in pursuing engineering or computer science in college.
One recent study by researchers at UCLA and the University of Arizona found public high schools in affluent areas receive more college recruiter visits than schools in less affluent areas. Those researchers also found recruiters from private colleges concentrate disproportionately on private schools. Rural areas usually have neither wealthy families nor private schools.
Rural parents can also be skeptical of higher education in general, says Julia DeGroot, Maple Valley’s college counselor. DeGroot is the daughter of Grand Rapids white-collar professionals and went to a private high school. For her, she says, “college was never, ‘Are you going?’ It was, ‘Where are you going?’ ” But at Maple Valley, she says, “That’s not the case for these kids.”
“One of the biggest struggles is getting the parents to see that big picture where, ‘It’s OK if my kid goes away to college for four years. It doesn’t mean that they’re never coming back.’ “
“Students come to campus with reluctance, feeling that it may be too big. Once they get there and talk one-on-one to a current student, faculty person or admissions staff, they tend to be less frightened,” Borst says.
But it’s not always easy for rural students to visit a campus. “You have to drive a long distance to actually get somewhere that’s an actual place,” explains Maple Valley senior Sarah Lowndes.
‘A community of nerds like me’
David Hochstetler, the Maple Valley student interested in engineering, met with representatives from Michigan Technological University at the college recruiting fair in Grand Rapids. That meeting helped him decide to attend. The school also sent him an invitation to apply as a “select nominee.” He applied and was accepted early and given a yearly academic scholarship.
He was also able to visit the campus in Houghton, more than eight hours away by car, because his family vacations on the Upper Peninsula. There, he took a college tour and connected with current students over his passion for engineering.
“Around here [home], there aren’t that many people on the engineering or computer side of things, ” he says. “I thought it would be cool to go into a community of nerds like me.”
This story about rural students was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education.
