Amid enrollment declines and federal changes, an editor explains a new rural college rankings system and shares tips for reporters covering higher education in rural America.
Photo credits: Maridav/Bigstock; Walter Smalling Jr./Library of Congress via Wikimedia Commons
Washington Monthly has long prided itself on offering a “different kind of college ranking,” using a formula that measures the return on investment of a degree, both to individual graduates and to the nation as a whole. Rather than rewarding selectivity – a priority consideration in many other publications’ ranking formulas – Washington Monthly focuses on affordability, accessibility, and earning power.
This year, for the first time, the magazine also ranked the best four-year colleges for rural America. Features Editor Gillen Tener Martin spoke with the Education Writers Association’s Public Editor Emily Richmond about the rankings, the impact of enrollment declines, and changes to federal programs and oversight. Gillen also shared takeaways for reporters looking for story ideas on rural colleges and the students they serve. This interview was edited for length and clarity.
Gillen Tener Martin: Paul Glastris, our editor-in-chief, and our data editor Robert Kelchen have been kicking around this idea for a couple of years now and figuring out how best to do it with the publicly available data.
Specifically, this year is an important time because a lot of these schools are the ones that are most vulnerable to the problems plaguing the entirety of the higher education sector, particularly enrollment declines. We know that nationally, higher education enrollment is going to be around 30% lower by 2039 than it was in 2010. A report came out this year showing that a quarter of small private colleges could close in the next decade, and a lot of the schools in rural America – a lot of the schools on this list – are small private colleges and if these schools close, that’s going to push college attendance out of reach for the majority of students. The majority of American students attend a college within 25 miles of home. So, if these rural schools close, that makes it a whole lot harder for rural students to gain a college degree.
Martin: The first four factors collectively try to capture the return on investment that schools are giving to their students, and specifically low- and median-income students, to show how these colleges are promoting social mobility in America. In these new rankings, we also use three additional metrics to try to illustrate the return on investment that schools are giving to their states and to rural communities specifically.
The first new metric is the percentage of schools’ students that come from within the state, and the second new metric is the percentage of alumni that stay in the state. The public flagship universities, which receive the majority of state dollars, have increasingly recruited students from out of state, and their alumni are more likely to leave the state afterward. So that investment is not being retained in the state.
The final new metric we used was looking at degrees that we determine as specifically in demand and useful in rural areas. That is health care professions, nursing, education, agriculture, natural resources, engineering, public administration, social services. These are service-oriented professions, filling gaps where rural areas are in dire need. And we give schools extra points if a large part of their graduates fall into that category of high-need majors.
Martin: One myth is that going to college doesn’t mean leaving a rural community. Going to college doesn’t mean outmigration. I think these schools are a great example of that. A rural student can grow up in a place they love and hope to continue calling home and still achieve the education that will allow them to be a huge benefit to that community and have a prosperous life in a rural community.
Another myth is that name recognition and selectivity do not go hand in hand with excellence and vice versa. You know, if you are in a small town, you could be providing an absolutely world-class education.
Look at Missouri University of Science and Technology (in Rolla, Missouri, No. 29 in the rankings). This school cracks the top 30 on our list because over half of its students study engineering, and they’re earning over $93,000 four years after graduation. That puts its graduates above Carnegie Mellon University on The Wall Street Journal’s best salaries ranking, and its acceptance rate is 79% versus Carnegie Mellon’s 12%. Missouri UST shows what a lot of these rural schools share in common, which is that they’re broadly accessible, and they’re excellent pathways to prosperous careers for students.
Martin: These schools are economic engines in a lot of ways, in the way that they build and retain talent locally, and in the number of jobs the universities provide to their communities. My hometown university, Cal Poly Humboldt (No. 8 in the rankings), is the largest employer in our county, in our town, by hundreds of jobs. So these schools, in so many ways, are really the economic backbone of their regions. They might be producing the majority of a region’s teachers or nurses. There are just so many ways that these schools are really supporting local tax bases and keeping whole towns and counties afloat.
Martin: These rural schools oftentimes enroll larger percentages of students who are Pell Grant recipients. Those federal dollars for students make up an outsized share of these institutions’ budget. Any disruption in that system, whether it’s just in processing the grants, administrative holdups, as to be expected when the program is moved to an entirely different agency, will be challenging. Rural schools typically have smaller administrative staffs. So when there are changes in the legal or regulatory environment that these schools are operating within, it’s going to be harder for them to keep pace with that.
Separate from the financial aid impact, we used data from the National Center for Education Statistics in our rankings. Higher education policymakers and researchers and many others also depend on that data for important information. The Trump administration gutted funding and staff for NCES, and it canceled some key data collection projects, including many for higher education. Rural schools are making really tough budgetary choices and really difficult decisions about programming, about services, about degree programs, as their budgets and their tuition dollars shrink. Any loss of data is going to hurt them in that they cannot make informed decisions about where to put their limited resources versus where to make something a lower priority. That loss of federal data collection is a big thing. You can’t make good policy without good data.
Martin: I would love to see stories about universities finding ways to keep people in rural communities or draw them to rural communities. One of the things companies and potential employers look for when considering relocating to a rural area is whether there’s a local, talented workforce. A lot of the manufacturing jobs of the future will be in rural areas, and many will require some level of postsecondary education. I went to college very far away from home, and after graduation, I did not want to move to New York or Washington, D.C. I wanted to move back to my rural community, but I could not find a way to get there that aligned with my career goals. Where are universities building partnerships that make more rural communities more viable and sustainable places to learn, stay, live, work, and build your life?
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