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> 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.

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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.

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