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.
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.
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.
On the other hand some of my friends who grew up in rural areas grew up making tree forts and complicated mechanical gadgets, welding metal junk into weird sculptures, blowing things up with increasingly powerful homemade explosives, or wandering around in the forest studying local insects, etc. The available “enriching experiences” are just a different sort than those available in a big city.
Higher population density is definitely helpful to most people with niche interests though.
Depends on the level of isolation and the person's need for socialization, I'd say. Most of that stuff is perfectly possible in a small town where kids can walk to school, bike to each other's houses, and grow up together with neighbor kids. In my case, I remember playing around with that kind of stuff but it's difficult (and dangerous, depending on who you ask) for a kid to grow up alone, isolated from other children. I'm not advocating for every kid to grow up in Manhattan -- I just think every kid should have the chance to make friends and experience childhood with those friends on their own terms. It's not very conducive for a kid to have to beg Mom or Dad to drive them every time they want to see a friend, and while the Internet/phones allow kids to play video games and chat with each other, I don't think we'll ever reach feature parity with reality.
I also had a similar experience. (53 people in my HS graduating class, with a high school population of approximately 200.) While I have no reason to believe that the school wasn't trying their best, the fact is that the school just didn't have the same academic opportunities as other schools.
My parents made it clear that I was going to go to college, because neither of them did. They gave me every opportunity they could. We went to museums. They sent me geek camp so I could be around other college bound kids. Had me take classes at the local junior college over the summer. We weren't poor, but these opportunities certainly weren't cheap.
What strikes me looking back at my high school graduating class is how few of them left. How few went to college. Of my friends at my high school, maybe only 2 moved away, and I don't even know how many went to college. Maybe six. It's really sad. 20 years later, and find them still working as a cashier at Walmart. I just did not expect that. I honestly expected everyone would scatter. They just didn't.
Conversely, the friends I made at geek camp (which were also all similar rural kids) all went to college, and scattered across the country. They also all have good jobs with advanced degrees.
Parents are probably the biggest factor in deciding a child's success. And quite frankly, all too often rural parents simply don't value education. It's all the same sterotypes we've heard. "Big cities are scary." "You'll turn into a muckity muck." "College is for brainwashing." Even as simple as, "You shouldn't leave all of us."
I often flip back to a feature in the local paper about graduating kids[0], and what strikes me more than anything is about how everyone in the article is down on education and leaving. Even one of the students that went to college intentionally aims low, and then even lower.
I've been there, and I just don't have a lot of sympathy for these people. It's a self-destructive culture.
It shouldn't surprise you that you "find them still working as a cashier at Walmart". This isn't even a rural/urban issue.
Urban environments are full of people who work retail and never move out of the city. It's the same thing! You'll find plenty of self-destructive culture in our urban environments. If anything, the retail workers are doing better than typical. They at least legally earn a living, which is respectable if not impressive.
It’s a difference in kind. Its not that some stayed, it’s that so very few left, especially when it was obvious 25 years ago that there was no economic base. Even moving 1 hour away to a major city was too much for them.
With the exception of one, even the ones I thought for sure would move didn’t. That’s what makes me shake my head. I just took it for granted their parents gave them a similar talk about having to move away like my mom gave me.
They could move to the city and work retail. Even if that gets them a higher minimum wage, they would still be worse off due to the cost of living. They would also be in an unfamiliar environment without their friends, adding stress and reducing safety.
It was obvious 25 years ago that Detroit had no economic base, at least relative to the population. Lots of people are still there.
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.