For General Zires in rural provinces, the lack of a university degree is not a professional obstacle. “My pressure is choosing an option, not to find an option.”

But despite the overall credits he obtained, the college is not part of its plan.

Since his graduation from high school in June, he was supervising a technical camp in the province’s arts council. If this does not turn into a permanent function, there is a work in creative food components, known as the “cookie file” of the way that makes the city smell such as baking cookies, or in local factories such as American Classic Outfitters, which design and sew athletic outfit.

“My cook is choosing an option, not finding an option,” he said.

Although country students graduate from high school at higher rates than their peers in cities and suburbs, less than them go to college.

Many rural schools, including those in Perry, attended by Townes, have started providing courses at the college level and working to remove academic and financial obstacles in front of higher education, with some success. But the college does not keep the same appeal to students in rural areas where they often need to travel further, and parents have less experience in the college, and some of the highest political voices skeptical in the need for higher education.

Facing the college Rural students have been largely flat in recent years, despite efforts at the boycott level and have avoided many universities. About 55 % of high school students in rural areas who graduated in 2023 joined the college, according to Data of the National Center for the House Research Center.This is compared to 64 % of suburban graduates and 59 % of urban graduates.

The college can make a big difference in gaining capabilities. Research conducted by the Social Security Administration found that an American man with a Bachelor’s degree earns an estimated $ 900,000 over his life with a peer with high school diploma. For women, the difference is about 630,000 dollars.

The school takes signals from the hopes and goals of families

The lack of a university degree is not an obstacle to opportunities in places like Wyoming County, where people like to say that there are more than cows than people. Dairy farms, potato fields, and macked sugar homes are a source of identity and jobs for the province, east of Bovalo.

“The college never, I do not know, or a problem with my family,” said Towns, among three children.

At Perry Secondary School, supervisor Daril McLeulin said that the boycott takes signals from students such as Towns, their families and society, with the completion of college offers with programs directed towards functional and technical fields such as construction deals. He said that he is happy to submit reference checks to employers and the army, as is the case in writing recommendations for college applications.

“We allow our students to know these institutions, whether they are college or whether employers compete for you,” he said. “Our job is now for success so that they can benefit from the largest of this competition, in the end, to improve the quality of their lives.”

However, joining the college in the National Mediterranean Province in recent years, has moved from 60 % of the 2022 group of graduates in 2022 to 67 % from 2024 and 56 % of graduates of 2025. The province indicates a decision to direct relief funds in the field of federal epidemic towards covering the tuition fees for students in the accelerated college registration program – a partnership with GENESEE College Community College. When federal funds were exhausted, the boycott prompted to continue it.

“This is a program in our society for some time, and it is a program that our society supports,” McLeulin said.

About 15 % of high school students in the United States were registered in the college classes in January 2025 through dual enrollment arrangements, which is a slightly lower rate than urban and suburban students, which is an educational department reconnaissance He found.

Rural access to dual enrollment is a growing field of concentration as defenders seek to bridge the gaps to reach higher education. College in the secondary school alliance this year Funding For seven states to develop policy to expand programs for rural students.

The problem of the image of higher education is acute in the rural areas of America

Throughout the country, many students feel the high costs of study fees. And the Americans are increasingly Skeptical From the college, opinion polls, with the Republicans, showed the dominant party in the rural areas of America, and lost confidence in higher education at higher rates than Democrats.

Andrew Corsic, CEO, told. An alliance for research in regional colleges At Apalashian State University, North Carolina. “You have to discover, how you can break this electronic information and say, in fact, people who get a bachelor’s degree, on average, earn more than 65 % of people who only get a high school diploma?”

In most rural America, about 21 % of people over the age of 25 have a Bachelor’s degree, compared to about 36 % of adults in other regions, according to Government analysis From the results of the census.

Some rural teachers do not hinder the promotion of the college

In the rural Putnam Province, Florida, about 14 % of adults get a Bachelor’s degree. This does not prevent director Joe Theopold from setting an annual goal for admission to the college by 100 % for students in Qi Roberts JR.-SR. high school.

Paper factories and power plants provide opportunities for a middle -class life in the province, where the cost of living is low. But Theopold tells students that the goal of higher education “is to go out and learn more about the world only, but also about yourself.”

“She does not want to be seventeen years old, and determines what she will do for the rest of your life,” he said.

Families choose the Magnet School because of their focus on higher education, although most of the boycott fathers did not go to college. Many students visit the campus of universities through Camp Osprey, a North Florida University program that helps students experience college housing and food halls.

In New York, Devon Wales, beginners at high school at his family farm in Perry, originated, but he did not see his future there. He is thinking about a welding profession, or as an electric line in South Carolina, where he heard that the salary may be to double what he will do at home. He said that none of his plans requires the college.

“I grew up on a farm, so all this practical work. That’s all I really know and I want to do,” Devon said.

They said that his parents and no Towns were paid in one way or another.

“I remember they are talking to me like,” hey, do you want to go to college? Towns said: “I don’t remember telling them,” not really. ” He said he would have listened if he had communicated with a university recruiter, but he would not be ready to move to a large extent.