Country Roads Take Me...?: An Ethnographic Case Study of College Pathways among Rural, First-Generation Students.

TLDR: In this article, the authors examined how rural culture interacts with rural student behavior and found that rural students attend college at lower rates than their urban and suburban counterparts and are likely to have lower college aspirations.

Abstract: The purpose of this study was to examine college pathways or college access and success of rural, first-generation students. Most research on college pathways for lowand moderate-income students focuses on those students as a whole or on urban lowsocioeconomic status (SES) students. (Caution is in order when generalizing the experiences of low-SES urban students to those of low-SES rural students.) The literature reveals that rural students attend college at lower rates than their urban and suburban counterparts and are likely to have lower college aspirations. Why such differences exist remains highly speculative in the literature. Especially absent is knowledge about how rural culture interacts with rural student behavior. Current research on pathways primarily examines factors used to predict college aspirations, participation, and completion of rural students. This ethnographic case study examined why and how such factors influenced students in a rural, high poverty county in southern West Virginia. The study explored rural cultural values and how rural culture