Lexington Books
Pages: 156
•
Trim: 6⅜ x 9⅜
978-1-4985-3686-8 • Hardback • December 2017 • $104.00 • (£80.00)
978-1-4985-3688-2 • Paperback • May 2019 • $46.99 • (£36.00)
978-1-4985-3687-5 • eBook • December 2017 • $44.50 • (£35.00)
Sonja Ardoin is program director and clinical assistant professor of higher education at Boston University.
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.
— Leslie Locke, University of Iowa
Ardoin provides an in-depth view of the current state of secondary school systems in rural communities, including especially alarming information on how this system affects the students themselves and places strain on rural high school guidance counselors. Rurality and geographic location as identifiers of underserved students are not yet common among academic literature, yet as shown, they greatly affect the ability and aspirations towards higher education of rural students. Rural students nationally will greatly benefit if readers implement the advice proposed in this book.
— Karen M. Ganss, Southern Utah University
In College Aspirations and Access in Working-Class Rural Communities, Ardoin provides a platform and creates a much needed space for discourse on the college-going experiences of rural, working-class students. Ardoin artfully moves beyond simplistic views of college access by adding complexity to the field of higher education’s collective understanding of social class. In doing so, she sheds light on what it truly means to come from a minoritized social class and a rural background.
— Georgianna L. Martin, University of Georgia