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Comment by brandmeyer | Hacker News Reader

"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.

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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."

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.

Whether or not it’s surprising is kind of besides the point no? It’s still a problem and to get it fixed the first step is to draw attention to it.

I think you missed the point of their question. The problem isn't that there aren't enough universities in rural locations, which is what that stat could be representing.

What's the problem?

I guess you could argue that in today's world you shouldn't have to move to a city to get a higher education.

But the truth is, even with improved remote offerings students will still flock to larger cities for their higher education.

The people remaining either don't want, need, or can achieve higher education and I don't see any problems with that.

This all assumes the stat is talking about people in rural areas vs people from rural areas.

I would be concerned if people from rural areas had largely less percentage points of higher education, but only if it was a very large gap.

Community and local bias toward lesser rates of higher education is expected. Both from the "my dad was a farmer, I'm a farmer too" stereotype and also the fact that income disparity/inequality between city living and rural living would result in a substantial gap when education costs are the same across the board.

That last point is something I have a problem with but honestly the attitude towards education spending in USA from the majority is very one sided. (My taxes shouldn't fund your fancy degree when I work in a factory - regardless of societal benefit I constantly receive.)

> People generally move or commute to cities for higher education

I'm not sure that's true. My impression is that most universities are in small towns. In the U.S., that describes many large state universities. I would guess that the cost of land in cities is a big reason.

EDIT: With many large universities enrolling tens of thousands of students, plus employing faculty and staff and supporting all the third parties (from caterers to construction to police to temp agencies), their towns can't be too tiny.

It depends on where you are. I think your impression that most universities are in small towns is an apt description of midwestern universities (i.e. states like Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, etc). It doesn't hold for either the west or east coast, really. See U of Washington, U of Oregon, Oregon State, state schools of California, state schools of New York, etc, etc. Sure, they might be in smaller cities, but larger cities than most states even have.

I grew up in rural Montana and wanted to study Electrical & Computer Engineering. I didn't really have a choice to stay in state (and get my degrees from a quality program). I could have studied at University of Montana, but that would have left me with a degree that, for what I wanted to do, would have been worthless. Sure, I could have made the 30-45 minute commute and gotten a cheap degree, but the result would have been a degree I didn't want.

For an in-state state-school engineering degree, I'd have had to at a minimum gone to Montana State University (5+ hours from my parents' house). MSU doesn't have much of a EE/CPE department, but does have some good engineering programs (like chemical). I had to go to Chicago to find the program I wanted.

> U of Oregon, Oregon State ... Sure, they might be in smaller cities, but larger cities than most states even have.

What? I'm from Oregon... Eugene (UO) is population 166k, Corvallis (OSU) is 57k. Portland is like 3x bigger than both combined. And UW fits your point, but WSU is so far in the middle of nowhere that it's practically in Idaho.

Eugene would be the largest city in Montana, ND, SD or Wyoming, for example. What constitutes a "large" city is largely shaped by perspective. Corvallis would likewise be one of the larger cities in most "fly-over" states.

For clarification I just assumed that if you could support a modern University attendence you by definition had a population density that far exceeds what I would call rural. (Next house miles away)

In other words, small town or city, neither is what I would describe as "rural".

What the study defines as rural would probably cover a lot of small towns I suspect so who really knows.

Many universities are located in the middle of nowhere and students "go there" to study, WSU was already mentioned, but Purdue, UIUC, Cornell, ...their are many University towns that don't have many (if any) local students at all.

Interestingly enough, I grew up in a small town outside Corvallis. Moving to a city as (relatively) big as Corvallis was pretty weird.

UW has a pretty good CS program, and is less than 8 hours away from Missoula (if you lived close to there). UW unfortunately does not offer in state tuition to border states (unless from certain native american tribes).

Good luck getting into UW's CSE program as an American with a non-perfect GPA. Nearly always you'll get rejected and end up getting a Business or Geography degree (as either will accept you), neither of which are worth the paper they're written on.

UW's main campus is not a school worth going to, the programs that are worth taking have so many people applying that if you don't have connections or cash to burn, you won't get in.

That reputation was also true when I applied in the mid 90s, and I think everyone I knew who worked for it were able to get in. Yes, its competitive, but it’s far from impossible, and if you really want it...

CSE has no bias for or against Americans, I’m not sure where that came from.

There are a lot of towns in the US that basically exist just to support a university. However, there are also tons of universities in large cities too. Google "universities in _" for almost any big city and you will get a list that goes on for multiple screens. Many of them are tiny, but usually at least a few will be large universities.

E.g. New York City has 110 universities and colleges with roughly 600k students[1]. Boston has 35 with 150k students[2]. DC has 20 with about 85k students[3]. Pittsburgh has over 150k students[4], etc.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_New_York_City

[2] http://www.bostonplans.org/getattachment/3488e768-1dd4-4446-...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universit....

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universit...

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?

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

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.

> 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

You hit the nail on the head.

People will put up with that environment if there's something in it for them. If you come from somewhere where a college degree isn't of visible utility and most people don't have one you're not gonna put up with it if you have to also go into debt for it.

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.

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