What is Giving Compass?
We connect donors to learning resources and ways to support community-led solutions. Learn more about us.
Giving Compass' Take:
• A report at MDRC examines the colossal gaps in rural post-secondary education and aims to develop collaborative initiatives that can address them.
• How do students in marginalized communities experience disproportionate effects from the lack of data on higher education in rural areas? What are you doing to foster partnerships that can build back better after COVID-19 for rural education?
• Learn more about the crisis facing colleges in rural areas.
There has been little evidence produced to inform the field of “what works” in rural colleges, what different sets of concerns rural students and their families face, or whether nationally recognized best practices are relevant for rural institutions. Homegrown, locally developed interventions, designed to help rural students succeed, have been largely overlooked by researchers. Adaptations of evidence-driven interventions have not been studied in rural locations.
Here are the facts: rural higher education is perennially under-resourced and making do with less than institutions in other locations. Degree attainment rates in rural areas are consistently lower than in urban and suburban parts of the same states. Understanding the successes and challenges in rural higher education is vital for improving educational outcomes and reducing poverty in these areas. Rural communities have unique strengths and need unique solutions. Rural college students — and potential students — should be considered part of the equity agenda for higher education researchers.
MDRC is developing a Rural Higher Education Initiative and seeks partners to join us in creating a research agenda to answer the open questions confronting students and higher education institutions in rural settings. We will learn from each other in a true partnership that generates policy-relevant, practitioner-focused findings and disseminates those findings in friendly, usable formats.
The initiative’s early products, produced with the Rural Matters Podcast and Ascendium Education Group, offer lessons from our work with colleges and nonprofits across the country. They are available for free under the Publications and Resources tab.
Read the full PDF about rural post-secondary education at MDRC.
Little research in higher education has been conducted in rural settings. To understand what is working and what research is needed, MDRC convened virtual meetings this past spring and summer with a diverse group of rural higher education leaders and stakeholders. The meetings revealed many innovative adaptations that rural educators have been making in response to the pandemic. Many of these strategies may be applicable to all institutions, not just those with a preponderance of rural students.