More states are offering incentives to encourage rural students to attend college

Several states with large rural populations are making the push to encourage more rural students, especially those from low-income families, to attend college by allowing students to earn college credits while still in high school, Mary Beth Marklein reports for USA Today. "The push reflects a broadening effort by state legislatures and governors to boost college completion rates. Studies show that students who take college-level courses while in high school are more likely to complete a college degree."

Gov. Gary Herbert

In Utah, Republican Gov. Gary Herbert "signed into law a $1.3 million program that lets high school students who live in remote areas of the state take college-level courses as part of their high school studies through live videoconferencing," Marklein writes. "Wyoming offers a loan repayment plan for high school teachers in the state who take extra courses that make them eligible to teach college-level courses. Rural Colorado schools can receive $500 for each student who completes an Advanced Placement course and exam under a pilot project that will begin this fall."

Other states, such Texas, Oregon and Kentucky have borrowed "from a New York initiative that boosted high school graduation rates and college-going rates among poor students in Harlem," Marklein writes. "In addition to helping link students with college classes, the programs, some of them federally funded, aim to create a 'college-going culture,' in some cases by introducing college concepts to fifth-graders and their parents."

Jeff Charbonneau, a high school teacher in Zillah, Wash., who teaches college level classes, told Marklein, "Oftentimes, urban students (are) able to see colleges around them, and rural students don't have that opportunity. It's about not only about raising standards in terms of what is being taught, it's also about raising awareness." (Read more)