Who's Missing from America's Colleges? Rural High School Graduates

https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/02/15/581895659/whos-missing-from-america-s-colleges-rural-high-school-graduates

by jofer • 8 years ago

257 291 8 years ago

My Scouts from a rural community are largely not college-bound. Some do community college for a year or two; some enter the military. Most others get a certificate and work at contracting/construction/electrician type jobs. They do well.

One bright bookish young man was an exception. My wife heard he was discouraged about college, so she researched and came up with a program to send qualified rural students to college. He's at Auburn, at little or no cost to his family now. But he was an exception.

matthewwiese• 8 years ago

Lovely to hear that your wife had the wherewithal to do that! As an Eagle Scout myself it always puts a smile on my face when I hear about a Scout finding success (after having worked to earn it). The program did a lot for developing my charisma and work ethic, not to mention the lasting friendships I have til this day. There are certainly gold nuggets hidden under all that fetishistic patriotism and religious handwringing.

Much luck to him. From one Scout to another. :)

forkLding2• 8 years ago

Theres also the concern if you're not really doing a STEM subject that has high career prospects, its not really worth it to take on student debt from college only to graduate without a stable career.

I think this may also be a concern to people from rural areas who can have livable careers without college.

watwut3• 8 years ago

Rural areas tend to be poorest as far as whites go. They are not full of great jobs.

forkLding2• 8 years ago

Agreed, however living and housing costs tend to be low, so relatively speaking, with a not-so-great job, can still have a livable career.

UncleMeat• 8 years ago

This is a risk, like anything else. But in aggregate college graduates make far more money than non-graduates, much more than would offset even the crazy tuition today.

VLM2• 8 years ago

Fascinating that culturally the author couldn't bring himself to talk to the kids. The only kid he talked to was one of the unusual college attendees. Kind of shocking if you think about it. He repeated a lot of narrative from numerous professional axe grinders, but nothing can really be learned from that. It wasn't a story about the rural kids who don't go to college, it was a story about politicians axe grinding where the claimed subject was never considered; could have been a story "about" Bolivian tin exports or farm subsidies for all the subject mattered to the discussion.

An analysis mode the author didn't consider is time. The rate of attendance has increased dramatically over time. Attendance is a little less than 10% lower for rural kids, and google nearly instantly found a graph of college attendance per year indicating the rate has been increasing at a fairly linear rate of a bit less than five percent per decade, so rural kids are not living in a dystopia as much as they're living in roughly the early 00s. Not a bad time to live, really. Culturally I'm sure there are variations in attitude in various areas and having 2005 cultural attitudes in the year 2018 isn't really much of an issue especially if your friends family neighbors and employer have attitudes that are significantly pre-2005 anyway.

An interesting analysis mode is comparing supply and demand. According to the linked Washington Post article below, only 27% of college grads in America work in a job closely related to their degree, and "The chances of finding a job related to your degree or major go up a few points if you move to a big city". The kids might be intelligent enough to see that taking out a home mortgage sized student loan to get a degree that will not lead to gainful employment is a poor investment. The article further states only 62 percent of grads had a job that requiring a degree. You can hand wave a lot, but around 4/5 of rural kids are throwing money away if they go to college.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/05/20/only-...

The advice on HN usually skews toward advice for SAT score recipients above 1475 points or so... please remember this is a discussion about 100% of American kids not the 1%. Based on the numbers, college was a waste of money for somewhere between one third and three quarters of attendees, so rural kids not wasting money on a bad investment is not exactly a crisis.

watwut3• 8 years ago

College grads do better then those who did not went to college - in terms of earnings, home ownership and just about any other stat I have seen.

They do worst then grads of previous generation through. The worst off are those who took debt and then dropped out.

Picking up grads as argument against college is odd, given that their results are not as bad as results of other demographic groups.

BeetleB2• 8 years ago

College grads do better then those who did not went to college - in terms of earnings, home ownership and just about any other stat I have seen.

Seen as an aggregate. It need not be true for subgroups.

jdhopeunique• 8 years ago

"College grads do better then those who did not went to college..."

This is simply selection bias or survivorship bias:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selection_bias

"They do worst then grads of previous generation though"

Again, selection bias. Currently everyone except a limited few are encouraged to go to college therefore the effect of selection bias has weakened over time and current grads don't do as well as grads of generations past.

nugi• 8 years ago

The world continues to focus on cities, while the rest of the people are left behind. I notice a clear metropolitan bias on HN, often incredulous that 1st world citizens are still living in a unimproved state. Even an 30min from one of the 10 biggest cities on the USA, broadband is still unavailable to a majority, ambulance times are in hours, and school funding is increasingly disappearing. Please keep in your minds and hearts that there are millions people outside the expected social systems generally assumed available to city and suburb dwellers.

xor1• 8 years ago

California on its own has a huge amount of disparity. I'm only familiar with the SF/Bay/LA/OC/SD bubbles, since that's where I've spent (and continue to spend) my entire life. I can't even name more than a few counties, and I can barely name any cities outside of those counties. The rest of California that isn't bordering any of these regions may as well be another country to me.

daodedickinson• 8 years ago

Victor Davis Hanson of Stanford's Hoover Institute has been the leading writer on this topic for years; this is his latest: https://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/california-21st-centur...

Roboprog• 8 years ago

If you want to see “Appalachia West”, drive north on I-5 until you get to Bakersfield, then take CA-99 from Bakersfield to Sacramento. Well, from the LA area, anyway. Or from SF go east on I-80 to Sac, then south on CA-99.

It’s a different world than the coastal cities. (Much like you said, but that’s the route, anyway)

Sacramento itself is a kind of borderland, despite being the capitol.

bequanna• 8 years ago

... ambulance times are in hours

Where? I live in an very remote part of Northern Minnesota. Even so, worst case ambulance time to most people in my area would be 15-20 mins.

I would argue that an incredibly small portion of the US population lives >1hr from an ambulance or first responder.

maxerickson2• 8 years ago

Here's a map of critical access hospitals, which are a pretty good proxy for rural emergency hospitals:

http://www.flexmonitoring.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/CAH...

It doesn't show larger hospitals, so it is hard to directly answer the question about access to emergency care, but it shows that there is quite wide geographic coverage. The map in this article shows that the gaps are just where you would expect, in the extraordinarily rural west:

https://www.cnn.com/2017/08/03/health/hospital-deserts/index...

sgtmas2006• 8 years ago

The closest hospital from me is an hour away. 45 if you drive semi-fast. That time + whatever response time is. We had to call an ambulance for my father once and it was 20-30 minutes for them to arrive. It's not really that uncommon.

freehunter2• 8 years ago

When I was growing up in the rural Midwest, about 30 minutes from the nearest small-town hospital, we waited nearly an hour and a half for an ambulance to arrive to help my sister with an asthma attack because my mom couldn't drive and keep her breathing at the same time.

jdminhbg• 8 years ago

Thirty minutes from a major city but ambulances take hours doesn't seem to make a ton of sense.

Slansitartop4• 8 years ago

I can imagine scenarios where it might. Maybe that area is in a different service region (so they don't dispatch from the city) with a much lower ambulance density. If all the ambulances are busy and have long travel times, it's possible it could take more than an hour for one to free up for a new call.

Veelox• 8 years ago

If the ambulance is ran by the county and there is only one or two and you are 4th in line for pickup it could happen.

marnett• 8 years ago

City ambulances don't service counties. If the county outside the city has less available ambulances but high demand then wait times go up.

Spooky232• 8 years ago

Depends on what time of day you have your emergency and what is happening.

The town I grew up in is 45-60m to an ER during the day, 30m at night. It’s a volunteer squad, so typical response time is ~20m, longer during the weekday. If someone else has an emergency, they will likely need a mutual aid call, which adds 15-30m. If you need ALS, the ambulance may need to pull over en route when a county paramedic responds. If you are further out, the times increase rapidly. Many common emergencies like stroke are guaranteed fatal.

In the small city that I live in, first responder for a medical emergency will arrive in <7m. Transport to hospital is ~5-10m.

BeetleB2• 8 years ago

Even an 30min from one of the 10 biggest cities on the USA, broadband is still unavailable to a majority, ambulance times are in hours, and school funding is increasingly disappearing.

I can't speak for school funding, but are you actually suggesting ambulance response times were better in those areas in the past? Or broadband?

VectorLock• 8 years ago

Why shouldn't the world focus on cities? If you're choosing to live in an area where you're geographically separated from other people can you really complain that you're not receiving benefits from systems that are more optimal when people are clustered together?

hueving2• 8 years ago

can you really complain that you're not receiving benefits from systems that are more optimal when people are clustered together

Yes. Society should always be doing more than what is cost optimal.

Cities are only being focused on right now naturally because that's where the rich people are. It wasn't that long ago that inner cities were quite poor and there were people making excuses like you for not investing in them.

vanilla_nut6• 8 years ago

Unfortunately, the children of people who choose to live outside of cities don't have a choice in where their parents live.

Barrin92• 8 years ago

choosing to live in an area where you're geographically separated from other people

people aren't created out of a vacuum and randomly choose a place to live. What if your 70 year old mother is simply too frail to move to a city? What if you desperately need the monthly paycheck and cannot just go months without pay looking for a job because you care for your child? What if you simply do not want your community to rot away because every abled bodied person runs off to the city?

People aren't just amoeba in a lab experiment.

thomastjeffery3• 8 years ago

Why should the world focus on cities?

Those who are born and raised in rural areas can't just uproot their lives the moment they turn 18 and start to afford, or even enjoy city life.

Because the commute is closer? It's still at least as slow in many places, because of traffic problems generated by tighter clusters of people.

The idea that cities are the most optimal is an idea, not a proven fact. Your experience may support the idea, but mine certainly does not.

The point here is that there are more people living in cities than in rural areas, simply because that has been true for a few generations, and people don't tend to change lifestyles.

People who grow up with one lifestyle realize the advantages it provides, and grow up with a bias toward that lifestyle. That bias coupled with the population difference is the real reason the majority of people don't care about rural areas. Personally, I think we should fight that bias.

thousandautumns2• 8 years ago

You are vastly overestimating the amount of control these people have over where they live.

IntronExon4• 8 years ago

Even an 30min from one of the 10 biggest cities on the USA, broadband is still unavailable to a majority, ambulance times are in hours, and school funding is increasingly disappearing.

The first claim seems unlikely, unless that’s 30 minutes at the speed of sound. I’d need solid citations to bite. The second seems unlikely as well, and given how bad response times can be in disadvantaged parts of cities, I’d wonder if it’s an urban/rural divide, or the usual rich/poor divide.

The third point is absolutely true, and that’s what happens when people leave, and therefore aren’t paying property taxes in that area. A supermajority of Americans live in and around cities, so that’s no shock.

http://www.nytimes.com/1992/05/27/us/nearly-half-in-the-us-a...

More recent: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_in_the_United_S...

80% of Americans live in cities, so is it really a shock that a majority of resources are focused on the majority of people?

axaxs• 8 years ago

I don't have a solid citation, apologies. But remember 4 of the top 10 cities are in the, landwise, mostly uninhabited Texas and Arizona. It's not a stretch to drive out of the city and lose access to broadband. I'm in a top 30 city and absolutely driving 30 minutes away takes broadband off the plate...depending on direction(south and west do, north and east dont).

freehunter2• 8 years ago

The first claim seems unlikely, unless that’s 30 minutes at the speed of sound.

It doesn't have to be a physical or technical limitation at all. It's a limitation of the cable monopolies not seeing profit in putting fiber or cable lines out there and there's no competition so if they don't, no one will.

As for everything else you've said... I would like to introduce you to the concept of the tyranny of the majority. If the richest country in the world says to its citizens "sorry your school isn't big enough to afford books, have fun in the job market" something is seriously fucked up.

Yes, yes it is a shock that rural populations are treated like shit. I grew up in it, and the fact that it's getting worse not better is still shocking every single day.

BenjiWiebe2• 8 years ago

I live in Central Kansas. We have 6Mbps top speed available. ~15 minutes away, they have 40Mbps, with gigabit coming in. ~15 minutes the other direction, you have satellite, or...... satellite. Cell service is too poor to use it for general purpose internet, DSL doesn't go that far from town, and the Pixius tower (10Mbps) is just out of range. And there are people who live there too.

cmrdporcupine• 8 years ago

I'm in Canada, but I live rural/exurban in the greater Toronto/Hamilton area, less than 8km from town and less than 20km from two major cities and there's no broadband because it's not profitable to run DSL or cable to my road. Telcos/Cable companies just won't do it. The next road over has it, through some fluke.

ryanobjc• 8 years ago

So, what you're saying is that, apart from buying goods and services from rural areas, that the rest of the countryside should somehow assist, with tax money, the rural citizens?

Strange that you'd say that, from a population historical of voting for anti-tax candidates. Perhaps not you personally.

In other words, you'd like to socialize the downsides of living in remote areas of the country?

JoeAltmaier4• 8 years ago

Not so. The state takes our taxes and runs the schools. The rural areas get little funding for their schools, even for the same size school (the same tax base approximately).

No, its city folks voting all the money to their schools. Its democracy, but its not pretty.

frgtpsswrdlame• 8 years ago

So, what you're saying is that, apart from buying goods and services from rural areas, that the rest of the countryside should somehow assist, with tax money, the rural citizens?

Yes.

Strange that you'd say that, from a population historical of voting for anti-tax candidates.

They're stuck in a two-party system where one side looks down their nose at rural voters and their values and the other sides looks just down their nose at rural voters.

In other words, you'd like to socialize the downsides of living in remote areas of the country?

The wording here makes it seem like what's happening in rural areas is just a consequence of nature but it's not, it's tied in with all sorts of policy decisions we've made over decades, making new policy decisions to fix that seems reasonable to me. Here's a really great article on the issue: https://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/novdec-2015/bloom-and...

rdiddly• 8 years ago

Comment banned in my imagination for violation of imaginary ban on the phrase "So you're saying..." and its variants, which are almost always the opening tag of a sentence that misrepresents something.

"Strange that you'd say that..."

They didn't.

EDIT: Deleted sarcasm. Also adding: I say all this even though I actually lean the same way in my suspicion that rural dwellers probably absorb proportionally more public spending in some categories, while voting against "big government" etc.

spamizbad• 8 years ago

For those not in poverty what you describe is -- indirectly -- a feature not a bug

Schools are disappearing because there is no tax base to support them, and the remaining residents tend to favor an austere government. There's also a degree of distrust of governmental organizations. There are a lot of small towns where, if the state government came in and said "We're going to build you a school for free and you won't have to pay for anything" there would be a lot of belly-aching about how the bus traffic would increase wear-and-tear on roads, causing more roadwork, raising taxes.

My father lives in rural Wisconsin. Every political season, there's a wave of people running for office trying to reduce the county's tax burden from the 2nd smallest to the 1st smallest in the state, by basically completely gutting what already meager community amenities are provided. Each year they get closer to sweeping the county elections.

stevenwoo2• 8 years ago

The little town in Texas that voted to put libertarians in charge is a decent cautionary tale. https://www.texasobserver.org/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-frees...

tbihl5• 8 years ago

I'm just going to point out regarding schools: if you let the state come build it for you, you're probably going to get a big, deadly dumpster fire of a school. It'll be a regional consolidated school so they can put a huge educational campus all in one place. It'll be far from any town because that's where the land is cheap. Everyone will have to choose between driving their kids to school or putting them on hour-long bus rides. And it'll abut a road where the 85th percentile speed is in excess of 50mph, which is not the smartest place for a hive of people who are immature and inadequately familiar with their own mortality. And some of them will probably be driving to it, too.

Then 25 years from now, those kids will find the asterisk from the state where they find themselves liable for all the maintenance on the huge complex they couldn't afford in the first place when the ceiling is leaking and there are cracks growing in the gymnasium's walls.

Hard to imagine why they don't have much affection for the programs provided by taxation. Admittedly, it's petty to take those grievances out on the local government, which probably provides the only public services they like. But when all you hear about is federal and state foolishness, and all you can affect is your own town, the misplaced anger isn't that surprising.

phil2482• 8 years ago

I'm not sure how to sympathize with people in rural areas lacking services when they relentlessly vote for anti-government leadership by very large margins.

If they want the market to provide, they should move closer to the markets.

IIAOPSW• 8 years ago

Even an 30min from one of the 10 biggest cities on the USA, broadband is still unavailable to a majority, ambulance times are in hours, and school funding is increasingly disappearing.

Literally all of those services are more efficient in cities. A km of fiber serves more household when population is dense. Ambulance (and any other vehicle) commute times are shorter when everyone's in the same place. A single school building can be within walking distance of more kids.

Its not a matter of city folk being entitled or holding their provincial counterparts in contempt. It is impossible for rural areas to enjoy the same standard of living as urbanities because literally every interaction and service has to pay extra to solve the last mile problem.

Do you know how much fiber, how many ambulances, how many school buildings it would take to make every rural area as desirable as the city?

ryandrake• 8 years ago

A third of rural whites, and 40 percent of rural white men, are resigned to believing that their children will grow up with a lower standard of living than they did

I always thought this was a given, and am surprised a significant number of people believe otherwise. Aren’t the Baby Boomers the last generation alive today that will on average have a better standard of living than their parents? Starting with Gen X, I’ve always believed that we have higher overall levels of debt, including student debt, less saved for retirement, less job security, less home ownership opportunity, lower expected lifetime earnings adjusted for inflation...

Godel_unicode• 8 years ago

I haven't been able to find an objective measure of standard of living on a generational basis, but according to Pew, people in general believe theirs will be as good if not better than their parents. This contrasts with the belief that rural Americans have.

http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2013/02/07/chapter-4-standard...

skybrian• 8 years ago

Even if it's true on average, it certainly doesn't need to be true for any given family.

gowld2• 8 years ago

we also have higher productivity and technological advancement, which counteracts at least part of decreases in income / increases in debt.

dragonwriter• 8 years ago

Aren’t the Baby Boomers the last generation alive today that will on average have a better standard of living than their parents?

Probably not. Gen X was predicted to be the first to do worse than their parents, but subsequently the Millennials were also predicted to be the first to (so I assume it hasn't turned out that way, on average, for GenX, or maybe GenX just got forgotten again as always seems to happen.) OTOH, the post-Millenial generation (GenZ) is already near near the age at which the GenX and Millennials predictions were first made, and I haven't heard anyone predicting it will happen/continue with them.

And the post-post-Millenial generation is alive today, so in any case it's probably pretty presumptuous to say that the Baby Boomers will be the last generation to be alive today to do anything except, I dunno, grow up without computers.

Slansitartop4• 8 years ago

I think the rural aspect is more important than the broad generational aspect. Rural areas have seen a great decline over the last several decades. City people of the same generation have had a different experience.

brandmeyer• 8 years ago

"Overall, 59 percent of rural high school grads — white and nonwhite, at every income level — go to college the subsequent fall. That's a lower proportion than the 62 percent of urban and 67 percent of suburban graduates, according to the National Student Clearinghouse, which tracks this."

That's not actually all that large of a difference. Its certainly not enough to justify the strong wording in the headline.

jessaustin• 8 years ago

Yeah, and this "subsequent fall" thing is misleading at best. It would be more interesting to wait a couple of years to see about the percentages of those who have dropped out and have education debt but no degree to show for it. Is the problem that rural people are less likely to get screwed by the education cartel?

johnny313• 8 years ago

I think the more telling statistic was a bit further into the article:

"Forty-two percent of people ages 18 to 24 are enrolled in all of higher education, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, but only 29 percent of rural people in that age group are enrolled, compared with nearly 48 percent from cities."

lugg3• 8 years ago

Is that people from rural areas or just people in rural areas? Because less people in higher education in rural areas shouldn't suprise anyone.

People generally move or commute to cities for higher education and that isn't really news. So depending what those numbers really mean could be significant.

CardenB• 8 years ago

I think the idea is that rural high school grads are way more likely to drop out.

forapurpose6• 8 years ago

That would be the same problem that other students from less educated communities have. I've many times read of research saying that they feel culturally isolated at college, and also at home where few share their experience and many question their decision to go to college. Many drop out.

jandrese• 8 years ago

That difference seems roughly in line with income levels as well. Inner city and rural communities don't have as much money as the suburbs, and go to college at a lower rate, shocking nobody.

vanilla_nut6• 8 years ago

As a graduate of a very rural American school (to give you an idea, my entire pre-k through 12th grade school was housed in a single building, with below 500 kids total; my graduating class was just over 30 students, and I was one of 3 who went on to a 4-year school -- fewer than 10 of us went to any college at all)... this article isn't very good. Like some other commenters have pointed out, the author failed to interview any rural teens besides a single college student -- the rest of the article is just listing statistics, which isn't inherently bad, but doesn't give us much of an idea of why rural teens aren't attending college.

In my anecdotal experience, the reason in simple: parents in rural areas don't value a college education (probably because many of them never attended college themselves, opting for blue collar work instead), and thus don't encourage their kids to attend college. Throughout my childhood, kids seemed to glorify blue collar work and even look down on white collar workers; I recall being bullied quite a bit because my parents were educated and encouraged me to work hard in school.

That might be common behaviour in a lot of schools, but it was especially demoralizing in my case because I had no friends my age who valued education. And even if I did, before I turned 16 I wouldn't have been able to see them outside of school anyway, since both of my parents worked, I couldn't drive, and most students in my class lived at least 10 miles from my house over largely 60mph speed limit country roads -- not to mention the brutal winters in my area which would prevent even the shortest biking or walking travel. Without peers to learn alongside, I'll admit that my motivation to educate myself suffered. An even bigger problem was the lack of opportunities in my area: by the time I reached senior year of high school, I had literally one class left to take with a teacher at my school (Calc I, a class some of my college friends took their freshman year of high school). Instead, I opted to take classes at the local community college my senior year... but since I wasn't technically a high school graduate yet, I was forced to pay full sticker price (maybe 2k for the year?) out of my own pocket -- not a very good way to encourage students to aim high.

Besides the lack of opportunity and the lack of motivated peers, it was also incredibly crushing to apply to schools and constantly miss out on programs designed to give underprivileged students a leg up simply because I'm not in their target demographics. Both of my parents worked 40+ hour weeks, yet my family was only barely middle class -- which actually made my life harder when I applied for financial aid, since the government expected me to come up with 20k a year out of pocket, since I didn't qualify as poor enough to warrant better aid. And when I finally got to my college, most students started ahead of me in introductory classes since my high school didn't offer any AP or IB classes.

Based on my experience, I wouldn't recommend anybody bring up their kids in a rural area in America. You're effectively trading a childhood of enriching experiences for slightly cheaper rent and less traffic.

dzdt• 8 years ago

I had a similar experiencee to you, but more positive. My school was about half the size of yours. I did senior year classes at the community college. My parents pushed the school board on this, and the district covered most or all of the tuition. Community college class credits transferred straight across to university, which not all AP classes do, so I came out ahead there.

Some things the article misses: in rural areas at least where I grew up there is a culture of avoiding loans and debt as much as possible. The current college culture expects students to rack up massive student loan debt. There is a clash there.

Also there is a lack of examples to follow. No one from my school has ever gone to an Ivy league college, for example. There is no one to ask about how it works or if it is even possible.

vanilla_nut6• 8 years ago

Examples and parents are definitely crucial. My parents didn't conceive of applying anywhere but state schools <4 hours away, so that's all I visited and applied to (aside from a single private college I ended up attending because nowhere else offered a decent CS program). I wish I'd had a role model in the software world who I could ask for advice, but I didn't even know a single software dev growing up.

In my anecdotal experience, a lot of families in my hometown area were living well beyond their means anyway, with lots of kids on a single blue-collar salary, a car for each adult and each >16 y/o kid, and vacations to Disney or cruises once or twice a year... so I don't have a sense of a culture of avoiding loans and debt. Even the farmers have been forced into the consumer debt cycle to stay solvent, buying new equipment and expensive animals to keep their tax burdens low but never saving anything for poor economic conditions. I think most kids I grew up with just didn't even see college as an option, since they didn't enjoy learning in the first place.

It's odd to think that most of these kids didn't even bother with vocational schools, as a lot of them are currently slaving away at minimum wage retail/food service jobs.

jacobolus5• 8 years ago

On the other hand some of my friends who grew up in rural areas grew up making tree forts and complicated mechanical gadgets, welding metal junk into weird sculptures, blowing things up with increasingly powerful homemade explosives, or wandering around in the forest studying local insects, etc. The available “enriching experiences” are just a different sort than those available in a big city.

Higher population density is definitely helpful to most people with niche interests though.

vanilla_nut6• 8 years ago

Depends on the level of isolation and the person's need for socialization, I'd say. Most of that stuff is perfectly possible in a small town where kids can walk to school, bike to each other's houses, and grow up together with neighbor kids. In my case, I remember playing around with that kind of stuff but it's difficult (and dangerous, depending on who you ask) for a kid to grow up alone, isolated from other children. I'm not advocating for every kid to grow up in Manhattan -- I just think every kid should have the chance to make friends and experience childhood with those friends on their own terms. It's not very conducive for a kid to have to beg Mom or Dad to drive them every time they want to see a friend, and while the Internet/phones allow kids to play video games and chat with each other, I don't think we'll ever reach feature parity with reality.

jonathankoren5• 8 years ago

A million upvotes if I could.

I also had a similar experience. (53 people in my HS graduating class, with a high school population of approximately 200.) While I have no reason to believe that the school wasn't trying their best, the fact is that the school just didn't have the same academic opportunities as other schools.

My parents made it clear that I was going to go to college, because neither of them did. They gave me every opportunity they could. We went to museums. They sent me geek camp so I could be around other college bound kids. Had me take classes at the local junior college over the summer. We weren't poor, but these opportunities certainly weren't cheap.

What strikes me looking back at my high school graduating class is how few of them left. How few went to college. Of my friends at my high school, maybe only 2 moved away, and I don't even know how many went to college. Maybe six. It's really sad. 20 years later, and find them still working as a cashier at Walmart. I just did not expect that. I honestly expected everyone would scatter. They just didn't.

Conversely, the friends I made at geek camp (which were also all similar rural kids) all went to college, and scattered across the country. They also all have good jobs with advanced degrees.

Parents are probably the biggest factor in deciding a child's success. And quite frankly, all too often rural parents simply don't value education. It's all the same sterotypes we've heard. "Big cities are scary." "You'll turn into a muckity muck." "College is for brainwashing." Even as simple as, "You shouldn't leave all of us."

I often flip back to a feature in the local paper about graduating kids[0], and what strikes me more than anything is about how everyone in the article is down on education and leaving. Even one of the students that went to college intentionally aims low, and then even lower.

I've been there, and I just don't have a lot of sympathy for these people. It's a self-destructive culture.

[0] http://thesouthern.com/news/local/rural-brain-drain/

tropo3• 8 years ago

It shouldn't surprise you that you "find them still working as a cashier at Walmart". This isn't even a rural/urban issue.

Urban environments are full of people who work retail and never move out of the city. It's the same thing! You'll find plenty of self-destructive culture in our urban environments. If anything, the retail workers are doing better than typical. They at least legally earn a living, which is respectable if not impressive.

spiznnx• 8 years ago

Is this even a little surprising? Most people I know aspire to similar career paths as their parents, or adults around them in high school. If the careers of adults who are around you growing up didn't require college, why would you go?

randomdata5• 8 years ago

Plus, getting a job is a numbers game. While there are, in absolute numbers, more jobs in large population areas, there are many more people wanting to have those jobs.

When you are competing against 100 other people for a particular job, you need something special to set yourself apart in order to gain the attention of the employer. A college degree, especially before it became popular to get one, was seen as a highly distinguishing feature.

When you are in a community that only has 100 people in total, you might be the only person who applies for the job, guaranteeing you the spot no matter what your background is.

bluedino• 8 years ago

Forget colleges - I would guess a higher number of rural area citizens are doing skilled jobs like welding or diesel repair than in cities.

thomastjeffery3• 8 years ago

If you live in a city, you can likely attend a college from your parents' house. For those of us in rural areas, that is not even remotely true.

If you intend to attend college, but live in a rural area, you have to prepare for all the expenses of living on your own, on top of quickly rising college expenses. You need a place to live, a budget for food, possibly even transportation.

There is also a general wealth disparity, since the cost of living in urban areas is generally higher, wages in urban areas are generally higher. Because of this, the average (mode) person in a rural area has a much lower income than the average person in an urban area.

In a country where education is leaving people in lifelong debt, it's not surprising that those of us who are born in rural areas are left behind.

JoeAltmaier4• 8 years ago

Many colleges have a 'parietal rule' where Freshmen must live in a dorm. So maybe not so different.

BrooklynRage• 8 years ago

Most public schools have a commuter option that lets you get out of that requirement if you can prove residency somewhere nearby.

leggomylibro• 8 years ago

Colleges tend to make it very easy to live in a new area, though. It's a problem that they've had to deal with for centuries, and one that they tend to be very sensitive towards.

There are dormitories and meal plans, but those can be expensive. For the frugal, most universities have their own small housing departments which help students find safe and affordable housing in the area.

But maybe there's a bit of a personality thing in how people view the experience. My grandmother, for example, cannot understand why I don't feel a strong connection and pull towards the land that I was born on. Whereas I cannot understand why anyone would.

thomastjeffery3• 8 years ago

Yes, that is true, and it does help, but it doesn't make it as easy for someone from a rural area to go to college as it is for someone in an urban area.

My point is there are a lot of factors, and a lot of bias that keep a small, but significant portion of rural youth out of college. Let's not act like these factors don't exist because we take some action to counteract them.

throwaway02553• 8 years ago

Most jobs don't require higher education.

Most jobs that do require higher education don't actually make any use of the higher education.

Are people who didn't follow the author up the ivory tower all failures who just fell through the cracks? What if some people are perfectly happy working in HVAC? These articles are always so condescending. The position that all people should by default go to college and that people who don't are lesser-than and fell through the cracks, is incredibly condescending and ignorant.

After interviewing and working with hundreds of people, I can't even tell the difference between people who have a degree and people who don't. I'm often surprised when I look. It definitely seems like a lot of graduates don't actually learn or retain much of anything, or the curriculum isn't applicable to anything after they graduate and quickly atrophies away.

I don't think colleges are about learning or skills anymore; they're a place where you pay an ever-growing amount of money to compete for a higher position in the social hierarchy, or to obtain government-mandated paper credentials for a specialized position you want.

A lot of the students I've talked to are contemptuous of the entire process, and have no moral qualms whatsoever with cheating and cramming their way through it. They see it as a series of pointless hoops they're being made to jump through. People who really want to learn or develop a skill seem to do it much more effectively elsewhere, and this seems to even be true of actively enrolled college students themselves.

I don't see college as something we need more of. It's an inefficiency in our system left over from a time when technical limitations gave colleges a monopoly on knowledge. We shouldn't be trying to expand its reach, we should be trying to replace it entirely with something less costly and more accessible.

The biggest hurdle are the incumbents who've already bought their status, and unfortunately they do also happen to have most of the power, so their position is safe for now. But I think people are finally starting to see through these clothes.

jacobolus5• 8 years ago

Can you quote the part that you feel is condescending?

The text of the article seems largely straightforward and factual to me. It doesn’t say that there’s anything inherently bad about not going to college, but rather that not having a college degree has made it difficult for some people to find new careers in places where many types of labor are facing declining demand because of large structural forces, and that those communities are feeling a general malaise due to drug use, high unemployment, outward migration, falling incomes, etc. (a claim supported by evidence from polls and census data).

Are you saying that it is condescending for the “executive director of the Kentucky Valley Educational Cooperative” to be advising rural students to try college? Is it wrong for people from rural areas who got college degrees to spend their time advocating that other rural young people do the same?

I know several people who grew up in rural places and founding college and subsequent highly technical careers very rewarding. For some, it was explicitly seen as a way to escape their (to them, stifling feeling) rural community. I also know people who grew up in a city but didn’t like it and moved to rural areas as adults. Different people have different preferences.

If you are arguing that many jobs that currently require degrees shouldn’t, that seems like an orthogonal conversation not really touched on by this article; it’s not at all clear that the people profiled here would disagree with that.

throwawayfjk• 8 years ago

I would assume that the rural are rational to the same degree as anyone else, so the statistical difference mostly means they find college less beneficial relative to their opportunities. There is too much of an agenda feel to this piece, from the title to selective interviews and statistics

seany• 8 years ago

The Case against Education - Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money. By Bryan Caplan Makes many of these same points in a longer form.

zdragnar4• 8 years ago

It's not even just the utility of the degree, it's the cost. Investing $20-100k plus four to 8 years lost work experience (depending on number of degrees) is, for most living in rural communities, an extreme luxury.

Considering the economic gap between metropolitan areas and rural communities, pretty much any degree not directly related to work preparation and placement is a luxury good that few can afford.

huac• 8 years ago

Most elite universities have income-based financial aid and going to one could easily conceivably be cheaper or at least on par with going to a state school. Of course one big problem is that rural students don't know that

jonathankoren5• 8 years ago

The economic adversary is often greatly mitigated by federal Pell Grants[0] and similar state level programs, especially when the student attends a junior college for the first two years.

As the article pointed out, the difference isn't academic, or even really economics, it's cultural. It's the attitude that college is for muckity mucks, and just a place to get brainwashed, along with "My dad didn't college, and he was fine. So I don't have to go." (Never mind that the mine the father worked in closed 15 years ago.) This attitude isn't a rural thing, as much as it is a rural male thing.[1]

Even if we ignored all of this, and focused just on economics, Your "4 - 8 years [of] lost work experience", is most likely experience in nothing relevant to whatever job you get after college. Being cashier at Dollar General isn't relevant to really anything, except being a cashier somewhere. This is the type of job you get with no education past high school. Even if you were stretch "relevant" to "life skills like showing up on time", then just get the part time job in college like many college students.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pell_Grant [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/11/gender-...

vanilla_nut6• 8 years ago

On the other hand, I come from a rural area and I feel that college was absolutely worth it for me, even with the huge bill that I had to pay myself. (I graduated fairly recently)

College was the first time in my life when I feel like I truly took responsibility for myself, and people generally thought I was a responsible kid growing up. I finally found myself in a place where I could make friends who shared interests with me who I truly wanted to interact with, and many of those friendships evolved into mentors or mentees. TAing, challenging classwork, and living for the first time on my own really forced me to mature and take charge of my future.

Of course, I could just be a late bloomer, or maybe my STEM interests and particular rural community made my situation unique. But I don't think I'm the only one in my generation who feels this way.

I agree that college is probably not appropriate for your average kid, but for the kind of kids who enjoy learning, who aspire to do something challenging for a career, I think higher learning is indispensable. It's important to keep in mind that college is meant to enrich people as individuals, not explicitly prepare them for jobs. Technical/vocational schools are for job prep.

throwaway02553• 8 years ago

It's important to keep in mind that college is meant to enrich people as individuals, not explicitly prepare them for jobs. Technical/vocational schools are for job prep.

The more college is shown to be failing the job market, the more I hear this argument.

Are people who don't go to college less enriched individuals?

Lately, academics seem to be shifting their value proposition to the instillation of this undetectable unmeasurable X-factor. We can't see it, we can't prove that it exists, but it's there, and its value is absolutely incalculable. How convenient for the sales pitch is this.

And I don't blame them. As knowledge and skills become accessible to everyone, that's the last defense they'll be left with. What else are they going to say? Our institution is completely out of touch with the job market and the economic realities of our nation, and this was all a complete waste of time?

Also, a lot of arguments in favor of college make the mistake of comparing it to nothing, and I think this argument is guilty of that.

I'll admit that college compares favorably to doing nothing, but people who skip college aren't just sitting alone in a room staring at a white wall while you're in your lectures. They have 1 year of life experiences for every 1 year of yours. Whatever it means to be an enriched individual, people who don't go to college can be just as enriched.

They can go live on their own too. They can take on responsibility, take on challenging work, have relationships, and most of them do. College was your path there and it worked well for you, and that's great. But I also agree with you that it's not ideal for everybody (or even for most people).

PhasmaFelis• 8 years ago

It's important to keep in mind that college is meant to enrich people as individuals, not explicitly prepare them for jobs. Technical/vocational schools are for job prep.

I'm fine with this as a concept, except that colleges routinely present themselves as job prep, and many employers follow suit.

zbentley• 8 years ago

It's important to keep in mind that college is meant to enrich people as individuals, not explicitly prepare them for jobs.

This is false. This claim ("colleges are for enrichment and learning; not preparation for a job!") is being trotted out a lot more recently. I consider it to be a pivot equivalent to the Bitcoin Bros' (LLC) pivot from "clearly this will replace currency" to "clearly it has been a store of value all along".

Job preparation/income/career enhancement has always been a huge part of the motivation to go to college. Even as many colleges have marketed themselves as "we're not just job prep; come here for the joy of learning", they have also spent huge amounts of resources on making their graduates competitive in the job market. Note that I don't think that expenditure necessarily paid off/was sufficient, just that career preparation is definitely a huge priority for colleges and people who attend them.

mattferderer• 8 years ago

It's important to keep in mind that college is meant to enrich people as individuals, not explicitly prepare them for jobs.

This should be highlighted. I believe college is a great luxury. Is it necessary? No. Can you learn job requirements faster elsewhere? Yes.

I wish K-12 were more like college in the sense that you have some guidelines but otherwise you're basically in a large library. You get to run around & try learning different things that interest you for a few years. It makes you more well rounded as an individual. This is something few people appreciate at a young age. I didn't fully appreciate it until I was older but I did enjoy the diverse opportunities at the time.

tonyedgecombe2• 8 years ago

College was the first time in my life when I feel like I truly took responsibility for myself

I often here this but I'm somewhat sceptical. I'm not saying you didn't turn into and adult, rather that you would have done that whether you went to college or not.

tonymet• 8 years ago

run for president , for you I will vote

bernardino2• 8 years ago

This comes at, I think, a critical point for me. In short, I spent four years at a community college (completing my associate degree in CS and exhausting almost all the courses I found interesting i.e. Mysticism, Writing Short Fiction, etc), and now in the fall I'm planning to attend San Francisco State University for CS. A few old high school friends, who attend Berkeley (one just graduated and is starting work in finance in SF in the summer, the other is a junior studying for med school), tell me I ought to stay another year at community college and apply to better, top-tier schools in the fall. Their argument? While college, as you mentioned, has become just a pursuit for "paper credentials for a specialized position you want", they insist that the school you graduate from plays a crucial role and there is numerous benefits which out-do the benefits of attending a low-tier school. So here's a cliche question: What do you think I should do? It seems the obvious answer, given what you said and what other commenters have said, is just finish the degree, it doesn't matter what school you attend. I suppose I'm just trying to get a bit of perspective. If it helps any, here's a brief background: first-generation student, immigrant from Mexico, parents combined make roughly 31k in a house of 6 (I have three sisters), and we live in California.

Truthfully, I would just like to get my degree already and start hacking away (also: helping my parents financially, etc). I obviously do hack away now, but courses and part-time work usually take up most of my time, that I can't give attention to all the interesting and fascinating things out there to learn, build, etc, i.e. I have a spreadsheet of links to new technologies, blog posts, etc, that I would like to learn and build stuff with. So here's my plan: hack away this summer -> attend school in the fall -> study, work part-time, etc -> summer internship -> study, work part-time, etc, -> graduate -> summer internship -> entry-level job somewhere hopefully.

skookumchuck2• 8 years ago

Whatever school you choose to attend, take the hard courses in your major. That's where the best professors will be, and the best students, and hence your best opportunity to learn the most.

leetcrew2• 8 years ago

only you can decide, but since you asked, I will give you my input.

a bachelor's degree helps a lot to get pretty much any white-collar, entry-level job. in some fields it's barely enough, but in ours, having a BS with a decent GPA and a couple internships basically guarantees you a job. you might not be able to work at FAANG type companies, but someone will definitely be willing to compensate you well for your work.

a degree from a prestigious school is better than a degree from most state schools, but if it takes you another year or two to start collecting that salary and build real work experience, it could ultimately be a wash.

sounds like you already know what path you want to take, and I bet it will work out just fine.

throwaway02553• 8 years ago

When I mentioned government-mandated credentials, I was thinking more of the medical and legal fields. Software engineering is ideal in this respect, because it's pretty much unregulated in that regard.

That makes software engineering an ideal choice for people not going to college at all. But since you're already 4 years in, you might as well finish. So definitely finish.

Outside of credentialism, there's still the other reason, and I think this is the one motivating the advice you're getting from your friends:

to compete for a higher position in the social hierarchy

You'll be more effective at this if you wait and go to the higher-status university.

From your current position, I'd definitely recommend finishing your degree, and since we've already optimized for status, I think I would wait and go to the university with the more fashionable brand if that option is available to you.

Top companies write a lot about how they've found no correlation between university ranking and job performance, but then they continue spending millions on job fairs and hiring mostly people out of top universities.

Your friends are right that many companies, especially big ones, will treat you very differently depending on which of these two schools you choose. Good luck.

forapurpose6• 8 years ago

While college, as you mentioned, has become just a pursuit for "paper credentials for a specialized position you want ...

You are going to cost yourself a lifetime of benefit if you make a decision based on these Internet rants of the moment; in 10 years they will be forgotten and you will be stuck with the consequences. One thing you learn with a real education is how to evaluate serious ideas and separate them from trendy memes. College is so much more beneficial and fulfilling than the quote above, in almost every aspect of life. If you love to learn, there is no better place - no place else will a professor guide your study, advise you, answer your questions, and give you feedback in any subject you like, or will you have a room full of peers studying and discussing the same thing, or will you have the resources - from labs to reference librarians. It will transform you as a person.

What do you think I should do?

Don't rely people on Internet bulletin boards for serious advice!

EDIT: I'm not in any way trying to tell you what to do; that's your business, and it depends on things I couldn't possibly know from even 100 HN posts. I'm just saying don't base your decision on trendy ideas and Internet advice. Also, to address a specific question, degrees from better schools absolutely provide you with better opportunities. Many organizations restrict hiring to only certain schools, and the people you befriend will provide better opportunities in the future. Steve Ballmer became CEO of Microsoft because he knew Bill Gates at Harvard. Note that you can always go to a better graduate school too. If you don't know that, take it as s sign that you have a lot of research in front of you. Good luck!

throwawayjava• 8 years ago

they insist that the school you graduate from plays a crucial role and there is numerous benefits which out-do the benefits of attending a low-tier school

In the case of Berkeley and a few others, they are absolutely correct.

I've seen both sides of the unknown school / huge name brand divide.

It matters. A lot. It shouldn't, it's a shame, but it does.

In CS, you will turn out just fine either way. But it does matter.

amorphid• 8 years ago

I'm in San Francisco. When you decide to start looking for work, let me know. I can (in my own mind) teach you all the buttons to push to get employers excited about hiring you. It helps to be competent, too :)

ghufran_syed2• 8 years ago

If you want to start working, and have the skills to do it, just start working! You could finish your entire cs degree part-time for less than the cost of one semester at Berkeley, via university of London (https://london.ac.uk/courses/computing-and-information-syste...) My daughter did this, started working at the age of 19 as a software developer, and is finishing her degree part-time. She should graduate when she’s 24, by which time she’ll have 5 years full-time experience (and five years of earning a salary) Feel free to message me if you have any questions.

EDIT: we are in the Bay Area too btw. And the above would NOT apply if, for example, you wanted to go on and do a PhD.

skookumchuck2• 8 years ago

cheating

I've noticed a strong correlation between college cheaters and those who do the minimum work possible, and people who later complain that their jobs were outsourced.

austincheney2• 8 years ago

Most jobs that do require higher education don't actually make any use of the higher education.

This is a serious misunderstanding of what education is or is for. Higher education doesn't exist to provide a skill. That is what trade schools are for. I know this is largely disagreeable for many people on here who learned to program in a university CS program.

Higher education exists to provide the educational background necessary to function in a professional, often corporate, setting. This means things like communications skills, following complex directions, and problem solving. It is a difference between a job of solving for implied tasks versus a job where everything is a directed task and nothing more is expected.

gilgoomesh• 8 years ago

I know that's what everyone claims but it's an insidious trope that encourages people to trust in a system that lacks measurable benefit. "Don't worry that you'll never use this information. Trust us: we've prepared you in nebulous ways that can't be measured or critiqued."

jjeaff4• 8 years ago

necessary to function in a professional, often corporate, setting. This means things like communications skills, following complex directions, and problem solving

I wonder if just working in a corporate setting and learning these skills as an intern or junior employee might be far more effective.

forapurpose6• 8 years ago

Higher education exists to provide the educational background necessary to function in a professional

To function as a person, a parent, a community member, a citizen, a consumer, a producer ...

scottlocklin• 8 years ago

I don't think college matters much as "job training" for the reasons you say.

The social hierarchy stuff is important though. If none of the credentialist ninnies running the country have ever lived in rural or working class places, well, there's eventually going to be a big disconnect. Wasn't always so; guys like George Kennan were from humble people and places.

forapurpose6• 8 years ago

These claims appear on many HN threads but I have yet to see much support for them, only assertions, anecdotes and Internet-style rants. They wouldn't stand up in an undergraduate college class.

kayoone• 8 years ago

With an education system where you have to pay (in my mind) ridiculous amounts of money to obtain a degree, i agree fully.

It is different in countries where education is essentially free, here i actually would recommend anyone to get the best education they possibly can, it can just benefit society as a whole even if most people don't retain many details of learned material.

meuk• 8 years ago

Agreed. College/university is more of a party experience for most, it doesn't necessarily help you doing your job (although it may help you do your job, since many employers require you to some degree).

walshemj• 8 years ago

The problem that the good jobs that don't require a university education are going or have gone away it's not like back in the day when Springsteen sings:

"And for my nineteenth birthday I got a union card and a wedding coat."

Nowadays jobs (junior bank staff) where you could join as school leaver at 16 or 18 and work your way up require a degree.

emodendroket19• 8 years ago

People who manage to get white-collar jobs without ever having attended college are exceptional, so the filtering has already happened before you meet them.

grigjd32• 8 years ago

I really didn't get the impression the author was viewing those without a college degree as inferior. I got the impression the author was noting the relative underrepresentation of rural students in college and examining causes.

rweba• 8 years ago

(1) Your sentiment is common on HN and I do agree that a college degree is overemphasized as a universal panacea, but it's also absolutely true that lots of people benefit from a university education. Comments like yours make it sound like every individual student would be better off if they skipped college. I don't think that's true.

(2) Going to college is like joining a gym. Some people go to the gym every day, seek out the in-house trainers for free tips, study fitness YouTube videos in their spare time, maybe even make a ton of friends at the gym. Other people pay the same monthly fee but can never seem to find the time to actually go to the gym yet they find plenty of time to play video games and eat junk food. My point is that you can't blame the gym if you don't get in shape. Students have to actively participate in the process if they are going to get the most out of it and unfortunately many do not. I don't think that's entirely the responsibility of the college.

tr0ut7• 8 years ago

So either you're not from the States or you were well funded in your own educational pursuits. Both are fine this, is not a personal attack.

It is not hard to find evidence that American university is outrageously expensive. And for what is the average result? You learned the theory/basics of X subject? Or you met cool people and had a good time?

I think we're getting to the point that it is not worth it for a common job and certainly not for a common job in tech.

(Not arguing medicine or advanced science/engineering degrees!)

coldtea• 8 years ago

Most jobs don't require higher education. Most jobs that do require higher education don't actually make any use of the higher education. Are people who didn't follow the author up the ivory tower all failures who just fell through the cracks?

Isn't those questions irrelevant to the issue the author poses: the lack of access to higher education of people from rural backgrounds.

That they can still get employed at "most jobs (that) don't require higher education" (which includes McDonalds), doesn't mean much. Do they get the better deal, or do their higher educated peers do (even if that education wasn't "really needed" by their future career)?

intopieces• 8 years ago

Most jobs don’t require higher education.

This is a claim about the state of the world today. Can you make this claim confidently about the job market for the next 45 years? Can anyone? In the face of such uncertainty, which do you see is the most viable hedge: settling for a specific career based on a narrow set of skills, or using the time when the brain is most absorbent to be exposed to a broad range of ideas and people?

Your issues with higher education are valid. But they speak to the need to reform education, not encourage people to forgo it.

wemdyjreichert2• 8 years ago

It's the old complaint about the schoolchild and arithmetic, "When am I actually going to use this?". Most people never need to do long-division by hand... even those who work in math-related professions use calculators.

Don't teach what people don't need to learn. There are better places for everyone to expend their time, energy, and money.

dsfyu404ed4• 8 years ago

This author takes for granted that rural students are politically compatible with college campuses. They're not.

All the barriers to attending and graduating college are severely aggravated when the people you'll be around at college do not share and cannot relate to your life experiences or values and a significant fraction of whom will see you as a backwards hick.

gnicholas• 8 years ago

I was also surprised that the article didn't address this very real issue. It started to talk about the "cultural" aspect, but it didn't mention politics except to note that rural areas were more pro-Trump than suburban areas. Bizarre that the author didn't put 2 and 2 together and consider that perhaps people who chose Trump over Clinton might not want to go to mostly-liberal ivory towers.

dizzystar• 8 years ago

I knew a teacher in a rural town. She had to raise funds just to buy books, paper, pencils, or anything else for the students to use. The whole operation was on donation.

Society gives up on the kids, the kids give up on society.

kasey_junk• 8 years ago

That is not a rural only situation. Education funding is an issue lots of places.

wemdyjreichert2• 8 years ago

Not everybody needs to go to college. Everybody doing this drives up prices, makes it less meaningful, and almost obligates many students to spend even more on grad school.

orionblastar• 8 years ago

I learned programming by myself at age 12 on a Commodore 64, in modern times kids get a tablet for school that cost almost as much as the Commodore 64 and 1541 drive cost me.

Tablets have caused Toys r Us and others to go out of business. You see I learned science from some of the toys my parents bought me, Legos, Tinker Toys, Lincoln Logs, board games, etc. When I went UMR and joined a fraternity there I already had memorized Trivia Pursuit cards from my younger years.

You don't need college to learn how to program, there are classes on the Internet.

Animats• 8 years ago

Overall, 59 percent of rural high school grads — white and nonwhite, at every income level — go to college the subsequent fall. That's a lower proportion than the 62 percent of urban and 67 percent of suburban graduates...

That's not a huge difference.

Aoyagi• 8 years ago

Perhaps if there wasn't such an irrational push for everyone to attend and finish college, it wouldn't be a problem...

AlwaysRock2• 8 years ago

I grew up in Vermont. Throwing very rough numbers out here but 30% of my graduating high school class went to college, 40% joined some branch of the military, and 30% are still living in the same town.

I don't love the military and the way we use it as a country but it does provide a lot of people an alternative to college and a way to get out.

SlowRobotAhead• 8 years ago

If you really work the system, the military can be an EXCELLENT opportunity. Likewise, if you need structure, they’ll certainly give it to you.

Some people go in without a plan, do 4-6 years and get out just as aimless as we went in, but by now they are grown and the responsibility for their lives is entirely their own. It’s like trade school, or coding boot camp, or college, you get out what you put in.

AlwaysRock2• 8 years ago

Absolutely. Of my friends who did join I can only think of one or two who have really done very well for themselves. However all the rest are still better off than my friends who stayed in their small town.

8bitsrule• 8 years ago

I'm seeing the old familiar refrain that going to college is about job training. There are many reasons to go to college, that's just one of them. There are many reasons apart from the mind-sharpening and focussing skills learned in classrooms.

Getting to know people unlike those you grew up with is one. Socializing. Networking. Exposure to many points of view. Exposure to history, culture, ideas. And on and on. Exposure to kinds of work that you would otherwise never know existed.

Work is what you do so you -can- live. Life is what you do outside of work. In college you can learn about ALL of your opportunities. People who just go to college to close-mindedly garner a skillset they think they need are cheating themselves out of the big picture.

Noone can tell you what you -really- want to do. You have to figure that out yourself. Else you're just better-trained to do something else. Tragic.

Who's Missing from America's Colleges? Rural High School Graduates

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