Rural Students and College Choice-An Exploratory Analysis
Grant
Overview
abstract
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The purpose of this project is to evaluate the postsecondary education choices of students from geographically rural areas within the United States. As much of the extant literature on higher education focuses on students from urban and suburban environments, the purpose of this project is to provide a description of the choices rural students make once they leave high school. These include questions of whether, where and at what types of postsecondary institutions these students choose to attend and if not choosing postsecondary education, what are the sets of choices these students make as they navigate their lives. The proposed study is important as baccalaureate degree attainment is a trusted vehicle to lift families and communities out of poverty. Given the disproportionality of poverty within rural regions, this project furthers the goals of the Andrew Carnegie Foundation Fellowship's Strengthening U.S. Democracy and Exploring New Narratives. The proposed project will be informed by three data streams: 1) an exploratory secondary data analysis of college aspirations and choices made by rural students nationally using the National Center for Education Statistics' (NCES) High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 (HSLS: 09); 2) a state level (North Carolina) exploratory secondary data analysis of college enrollments of students from rural counties, patterns of enrollment at two and four year institutions; and 3) a primary data collection and analysis using questions from the HSLS:09 to analyze college aspirations and choices among students in Eastern North Carolina by geographic distance to two and four year institutions. Through the latter project activity I hope to garner a sense of not only student college choices, but also an understanding of why rural students are less likely than their urban and suburban counterparts to attend college, higher high school graduation rates notwithstanding.
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