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.