College Aspirations and Access in Working-Class Rural Communities

The Mixed Signals, Challenges, and New Language First-Generation Students Encounter

By (author) Sonja Ardoin

Publication date:

20 December 2017

Length of book:

156 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

Dimensions:

236x161mm
6x9"

ISBN-13: 9781498536868

College Aspirations and Access in Working Class Rural Communities: The Mixed Signals, Challenges, and New Language First-Generation Students Encounter explores how a working class, rural environment influences rural students’ opportunities to pursue higher education and engage in the college choice process. Based on a case study with accounts from rural high school students and counselors, this book examines how these communities perceive higher education and what challenges arise for both rural students and counselors. The book addresses how college knowledge and university jargon illustrate the gap between rural cultural capital and higher education cultural capital. Insights about approaches to reduce barriers created by college knowledge and university jargon are shared and strategies for offering rural students pathways to learn academic language and navigate higher education are presented for both secondary and higher education institutions.

Contents

Foreword
Acknowledgements
Author’s Note
Introduction. Rural Research Reasoning
Chapter 1. Rural Representation
Chapter 2. The College Access Gap for Rural Students
Chapter 3. Putting the Pieces Together: Connections between a College Choice Model, Cultural Capital, and College Access, Knowledge, and Jargon
Chapter 4. “More Trouble Than It’s Worth or Path to a ‘Better Life’?”: Rural Attitudes About College
Chapter 5. “I Know What B.S. Means, Just Not In Those Terms”: Rural Students’ Encounters With College Knowledge
Chapter 6. “I Have More to Do Than I Can Possibly Do Well”: Rural Counselors’ Challenges with College Counseling
Chapter 7. Aspirations and Access Assignments For Everyone In Education: Strategies For Rural, Public High Schools, Rural Communities, Higher Education, And Policymakers
References
Appendices
A. USDA ERS Nonmetropolitan Map
B. USDA ERS Changing Metro Status Map
C. USDA ERS Rural Areas Map
D. 2015 U.S. Census Data on MapDot
E. USDA ERS Low Education Counties Map
F. USDA ERS Persistent Poverty Counties Map
G. College and University Jargon List
About the Author

“You don’t know what you don’t know.” This participant quote exemplifies this well-researched, engaging, and timely book about rural, first generation, and working class students and their opportunities to access college knowledge and preparation. Ardoin bares light on this under-researched population and exposes the challenges rural students and schools face in terms of bridging the rural high school-college gap. She awakens us to the revolving door system of college admissions and exposes the stratification inherent in a variety of college processes. These processes often hinder rural students success in entering and persisting at institutions of higher education. Rural, first-generation, and working class students and families don’t know what they don’t know. It is incumbent on rural schools to be a place that gathers and disseminates knowledge about college such that rural, first-generation, and working class students are as competent and competitive as their urban and suburban peers.