
Who's Missing from America's Colleges? Rural High School Graduates - jofer
https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/02/15/581895659/whos-missing-from-america-s-colleges-rural-high-school-graduates
======
throwaway0255
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.

~~~
bernardino
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.

~~~
throwaway0255
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.

~~~
evoloution
This, finish and go to the best Uni you can; everything else that anyone tells
you may not serve you well. Although throwaway0255 is making an argument about
whether you could achieve better education by yourself vs. an organized
university curriculum, you should never overlook the effect that a degree from
a prestigious University can have. In most fields companies hire people from
the highest ranked Universities, when there is a recession they still hire
those ones even if they hire fewer people in total. Money and time spent in a
top-tier University always pays off either by prestige, connections or just by
the network that you build there. That is how US works currently, top Unis are
becoming the tool of class formation. Plus while in Uni you can still do what
you want if your part time jobs are not very demanding. Finally, for most
people with not enough fu money, this is the last time to really experiment
without putting their livelihoods on the line.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
_This, finish and go to the best Uni you can;_

There was an interesting program on BBC Radio last year that questioned this,
they had an example of a student that had excelled during school and went on
to the top university for her subject where she found herself in the middle of
the pack. This ended any career opportunities in that subject for her.

She knew people who took the same subject at lower tier universities, they
came out top of the class and were able to find work in the same subject.

~~~
rmah
I bet they had to search long and hard to find such an example. For the simple
fact is that after your first job (and usually not even then), no one cares
about your university grades. All they see is what school attended and what
you majored in. And after a decade or two, people stop really caring about
your major as well. The "brand" of the university lasts a lifetime.

------
brandmeyer
"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.

~~~
johnny313
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."

~~~
lugg
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.

~~~
forapurpose
> 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.

~~~
hermitdev
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.

~~~
arcticfox
> 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.

~~~
hermitdev
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.

~~~
lugg
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.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
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.

------
nugi
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.

~~~
VectorLock
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?

~~~
hueving
>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.

~~~
KamBha
While I agree that the more investment is probably required in rural areas, I
think your assertion that the reason why rural areas are being under funded is
incorrect.

Reality is that more people now live in urban areas[1]. Democracy being what
it is, most funding goes to the majority - which are in the city. Add to that
that setting up this infrastructure is often not cost effective for a private
business (due to a lack of customers) and that most rural communities prefer
less government intervention (ie less taxes), we have a situation where there
is little impetus to invest in rural communities by private companies and
governments (at least local) don't have funding to pay for service.

[1]
[https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2016/comm/acs-...](https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2016/comm/acs-
rural-urban.html)

~~~
hueving
>Democracy being what it is, most funding goes to the majority - which are in
the city.

Democracy has to be more than two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for
dinner.

It's true that the majority can just vote to line their own pockets and leave
the minority in squalor, but that leaves a pretty shitty country leftover.
Many of these rural areas look like third-world countries and that's not
something us urbanites should be proud of.

Scholarship money disproportionately goes to lower income students, but that
doesn't mean we should stop giving them scholarship money.

------
JoeAltmaier
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
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. :)

------
thomastjeffery
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.

~~~
leggomylibro
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.

~~~
thomastjeffery
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.

------
forkLding
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.

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

~~~
forkLding
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.

~~~
Slansitartop
But college costs the same for everyone.

On average, I see more expensive cars in the Bay Area than I do in my home
state. I suspect that's because they're proportionally cheaper to someone who
can afford to live there.

~~~
lev99
People in rural areas have less options to live with their parents while
attending a college.

People that live with their parents while going to college save a significant
amount of money compared to people that live on their own.

College costs are actually not the same for everyone. It's hard to find two
people that have the same degree and paid exactly the same for it. It's easy
to find two people eating the same burrito that paid exactly the same for it.

~~~
Slansitartop
That's true, and actually amplifies the point I was trying to get across. A
low rural cost of living doesn't help low-income rural kids afford college,
since the college is likely in a higher income city area and priced
accordingly.

~~~
Fomite
Agricultural and land grant schools are often _not_ in urban areas - and far
closer to where rural kids are growing up, and have more helpful programs to
help them in their actual careers.

Washington State University, for example, is _vastly_ more affordable to live
near than the University of Washington, and has agriculture, forestry and
farming oriented majors, as well as all the ones you'd typically expect.

~~~
lev99
The cost of living in rural agricultural areas is less than the cost of living
in the towns with top agricultural programs.

~~~
Fomite
True, but I don't think it's fair to characterize them as "higher income city
areas".

------
ryandrake
> 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...

~~~
dragonwriter
> 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.

------
VLM
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-...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/05/20/only-27-percent-
of-college-grads-have-a-job-related-to-their-major)

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.

~~~
watwut
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.

~~~
jdhopeunique
"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](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.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Hmm. So if only 10% of people go to college, you'd expect that the best 10%
go, and you'd expect the best 10% to do better than the other 90%. But if 70%
of people go to college, well, we don't have 70% "winner" positions available
in society, so a bunch of those who go to college have to accept not-so-good
outcomes. That makes some sense.

~~~
VLM
Yes its a variation on the interview suit injustice problem

If you require job applicants to buy a $1K suit to wear to interviews, that's
merely a weird tax if there's one applicant per job and therefore everyone
ends up with a $100K job for their $1K investment and everyone who buys a suit
is ridiculously happy and thinks everyone should be forced to buy a suit to be
as happy as they are.

Of course if you have ten dudes buying ten $1K suits to interview for one job,
thats net $9K of injustice, and the vast majority of people who buy an
interview suit see it as a wasteful horrible racket designed to extract money
from the very people who have the least opportunity in life to begin with,
etc.

The army recruitment analogy is similar. The army needs 200K recruits, as long
as more than 200K show up, its not a problem (for the army, anyway) if 350K
show up one year or 375K the next year, only 200K are gonna make it anyway, so
trying to make a relevant story about 350K vs 375K is going to be deaf ears.

------
dsfyu404ed
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
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.

------
Taylor_OD
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
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.

~~~
Taylor_OD
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.

------
wemdyjreichert
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.

------
vanilla_nut
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
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_nut
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.

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8bitsrule
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.

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Animats
_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.

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

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orionblastar
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.

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spiznnx
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?

~~~
randomdata
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.

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

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

