College Aspirations and Access in Working-Class Rural Communities

Sonja Ardoin is program director and clinical assistant professor of higher education at Boston University.

• ContentsForewordAcknowledgementsAuthor’s NoteIntroduction. Rural Research ReasoningChapter 1. Rural RepresentationChapter 2. The College Access Gap for Rural StudentsChapter 3. Putting the Pieces Together: Connections between a College Choice Model, Cultural Capital, and College Access, Knowledge, and JargonChapter 4. “More Trouble Than It’s Worth or Path to a ‘Better Life’?”: Rural Attitudes About CollegeChapter 5. “I Know What B.S. Means, Just Not In Those Terms”: Rural Students’ Encounters With College KnowledgeChapter 6. “I Have More to Do Than I Can Possibly Do Well”: Rural Counselors’ Challenges with College CounselingChapter 7. Aspirations and Access Assignments For Everyone In Education: Strategies For Rural, Public High Schools, Rural Communities, Higher Education, And PolicymakersReferencesAppendicesA. USDA ERS Nonmetropolitan MapB. USDA ERS Changing Metro Status MapC. USDA ERS Rural Areas MapD. 2015 U.S. Census Data on MapDotE. USDA ERS Low Education Counties M

“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.