"When they're ready to be done with high school, they think, 'That's all the school I need, and I'm just going to go and find a job.' " That job, Gordon explains, might be on the family farm or at the egg-packaging plant or the factory that makes pulleys and conveyor belts, or driving trucks that haul grain.
Variations of this mindset, among many other reasons, have given rise to a reality that has gotten lost in the impassioned debate over who gets to go to college, which often focuses on racial and ethnic minorities and students from low-income families: The high school graduates who head off to campus in the lowest proportions in America are the ones from rural places.
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.
