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Who's Missing from America's Colleges? Rural High School Graduates

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Re: Who's Missing from America's Colleges? Rural High School Graduates

#51

Post by thomastjeffery »

VectorLock wrote: post #40
nugi wrote: post #6

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…

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?

Why should the world focus on cities?

Those who are born and raised in rural areas can't just uproot their lives the moment they turn 18 and start to afford, or even enjoy city life.

Because the commute is closer? It's still at least as slow in many places, because of traffic problems generated by tighter clusters of people.

The idea that cities are the most optimal is an idea, not a proven fact. Your experience may support the idea, but mine certainly does not.

The point here is that there are more people living in cities than in rural areas, simply because that has been true for a few generations, and people don't tend to change lifestyles.

People who grow up with one lifestyle realize the advantages it provides, and grow up with a bias toward that lifestyle. That bias coupled with the population difference is the real reason the majority of people don't care about rural areas. Personally, I think we should fight that bias.

Re: Who's Missing from America's Colleges? Rural High School Graduates

#52

Post by IntronExon »

hueving wrote: post #44
VectorLock wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

>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 th…

It’s where a large majority of all people are.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_in_the_United_S...

Re: Who's Missing from America's Colleges? Rural High School Graduates

#53

Post by lugg »

johnny313 wrote: post #25
brandmeyer wrote: post #9

"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.

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."

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.

Re: Who's Missing from America's Colleges? Rural High School Graduates

#54

Post by VLM »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #31
jdhopeunique wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 "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 gra…

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.

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.

Re: Who's Missing from America's Colleges? Rural High School Graduates

#55

Post by ryanobjc »

nugi wrote: post #6

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…

So, what you're saying is that, apart from buying goods and services from rural areas, that the rest of the countryside should somehow assist, with tax money, the rural citizens?

Strange that you'd say that, from a population historical of voting for anti-tax candidates. Perhaps not you personally.

In other words, you'd like to socialize the downsides of living in remote areas of the country?

Re: Who's Missing from America's Colleges? Rural High School Graduates

#57

Post by 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.

Re: Who's Missing from America's Colleges? Rural High School Graduates

#58

Post by JoeAltmaier »

thomastjeffery wrote: post #57

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 dis…

Many colleges have a 'parietal rule' where Freshmen must live in a dorm. So maybe not so different.

Re: Who's Missing from America's Colleges? Rural High School Graduates

#59

Post by KamBha »

hueving wrote: post #44
VectorLock wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

>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 th…

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-...

Re: Who's Missing from America's Colleges? Rural High School Graduates

#60

Post by JoeAltmaier »

ryanobjc wrote: post #55
nugi wrote: post #6

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…

So, what you're saying is that, apart from buying goods and services from rural areas, that the rest of the countryside should somehow assist, with tax money, the rural citizens? Strange that you'd say that, from a population historical of voting for anti-tax candidates. Perhaps not you personally. In other words, you'd like to socialize the downsides of living in remote areas of the country?

Not so. The state takes our taxes and runs the schools. The rural areas get little funding for their schools, even for the same size school (the same tax base approximately).

No, its city folks voting all the money to their schools. Its democracy, but its not pretty.

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