The Importance of Community Context for the Rural Disadvantage and Suburban Advantage in Higher Education

Scholars have developed theories that suggest that people’s educational outcomes are determined by characteristics at multiple levels, including the individual, family, school, and community. They have suggested that variation at all the levels may shape educational differences between rural and non-rural students. Yet they have not fully clarified the community context effects using measures of residential community characteristics. The following article uses the National Longitudinal Study of Youth 1997 to explore how individual characteristics, family factors, school-related behaviors and attitudes, and community factors influence the spatial differences in three higher educational outcomes: 4-year college enrollment, selective college attendance, and BA attainment. It distinguishes rural not just from non-rural youth, but from both urban and suburban youth. According to the findings, rural youth had less educational success than suburban youth, but did not significantly differ from urban youth. These differences were partly explained by the individual-level variation, but perhaps most importantly by labor market environments and socioeconomic conditions at the county level.