Earlier this month, I received a high school graduation announcement for my alma mater, Cushing High School in Cushing, Okla. A friend’s son walked across the same stage I did 25 years ago and, as I did, will be going to college in the fall.
Neither of us had a good chance of making it that far, statistically speaking.
College-going rates among rural students remain lower than the national average—in 2022 just over half (53 percent) went directly to college, compared to 63 percent of suburban and 60 percent of urban high school graduates. Rural students who do find their way to higher education may do so because of TRIO programs like Upward Bound and Talent Search. But with traditional-age enrollments projected to decline and federal support for access programs now at risk, a renewed focus on rural areas could get more students on campus and help grow rural economies. Colleges also have the added political incentive of showing rural communities, where skepticism of higher ed may be elevated, the benefits of a degree.
Yet this kind of outreach can’t stop at recruiting rural students: Colleges and universities also must show they’re prepared to retain and otherwise support them. Rural students have specific needs. Rural communities tend to have higher poverty rates than urban areas. Rural students are more likely to receive Pell Grants and to take out student loans. And once rural students overcome the challenge of getting to campus, they encounter new barriers. Because they often live in education deserts, they may be navigating new urban environments. They likely didn’t have the opportunity to take higher-level science or math courses in high school to prepare them for college-level classes. And they can struggle with social isolation.
In a recent conversation for The Key, Inside Higher Ed’s news and analysis podcast, Mara Tieken, a professor of education at Bates College who researches racial and educational equity in rural schools and communities, told me the story of a student she followed for her book, Educated Out: How Rural Students Navigate Elite Colleges—and What It Costs Them (University of Chicago Press, 2025). A Latina from the West Coast found herself at an East Coast institution Tieken called Hilltop and was struggling to integrate socially. “She’s on campus; she hates the food, she misses hunting and fishing and all the ways that she used to spend her time—and she really misses her family,” Tieken told me. “Yet she’s also finding it harder and harder to talk to them about everything that’s happening in Hilltop, because this is a completely different world for them. [Her parents] both have an eighth-grade education,” Tieken said.
The challenges that many rural students face are very much tied to their geography, Tieken said. However, colleges don’t do a great job of identifying and tracking rurality among their students, she added. “We tend to think about geography in some pretty superficial ways when it comes to higher education. Like, ‘Do we have a student from all 50 states?’ That actually is a very meaningless indicator when it comes to thinking about access and equity.”
Higher ed has a vocabulary and awareness of how race and class influence students’ access and experience of higher ed, Tieken continued. “We don’t have that vocabulary for how geography matters.”
Through her research, Tieken also found that identifying as rural can help students see the benefits of their background that may be hidden by negative stereotypes about rural communities in pop culture and the media. “Whether or not it’s a part of your identity, you’re still facing the same barriers that are tied to those identity markers. And so, if you don’t see it as such you internalize it [and think], ‘It’s about me. It’s my fault. I’m not right. I’m just not good enough,’” she said. “They need to hear these messages where their rurality is actually celebrated and they can see how it is an asset in their life.”
As part of this recommitment to rural learners, institutions also need to think about their lives after college. Students who want to return home after college will have different career preparation needs. Career support for rural students should include building up local alumni networks that can offer internships and mentoring, Tieken said. Rural apprenticeships, though still underdeveloped, have been successful at training rural students for jobs closer to home. Rural learners get jobs and critical preparation, and local businesses have access to skilled workers. Rural apprenticeships have higher completion rates than those in urban areas, and they span industries—from agriculture technology to water management to oyster farming specific to rural parts of Maine.
Colleges probably have more support systems for rural learners than they realize. Some will just require more focus on how geography shapes a student’s experience on campus. For rural students like my friend’s son or the students Tieken researched, that kind of attention could help them find friends, keep them on track to graduation and help them explore career pathways that will lead them back home (if that’s where they want to be). And for colleges trying to make the case to skeptical communities that a degree is still worth the investment, those results speak for themselves.
Sara Custer is editor in chief at Inside Higher Ed.
