Professor urges college grads to consider living in rural area

"The conventional wisdom among young college-educated people seems to be that living in a small country town would be a dead end for them — that rural America is a homogeneously conservative, isolated and unpleasant place. But these preconceptions are not only incorrect, they are also unduly limiting the opportunities of new college graduates," Samual Abrams writes for The New York Times. Abrams is a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College.

Now more than ever, young adults prefer to live in cities, partly because they want access to mass transit and amenities like retail shopping, entertainment and recreation opportunities. That includes people who were born in small towns but chose not to return after college, fearing that they could not be successful in their careers if they moved back home.

Rural America doesn't live up to the stereotypes, Abrams writes, citing data from a nationwide survey on community and society: "The data show that rural areas are not ideologically monolithic; that college-educated Americans living in rural areas feel they are meaningfully connected to their communities; that these people are quite satisfied with their communities and the available professional opportunities, and are not looking to move away."

There are tradeoffs to living in rural areas, just as there are with living in urban areas, "but rural America is not 'flyover' country; it is a dynamic part of our nation, even — and perhaps especially — for the highly educated," Abrams writes. "Understanding this reality could improve the lives of many college-educated people. At the very least, it should help rid them of some common anti-rural prejudices."