Welcome to Mile Markers, a bimonthly newsletter about rural higher education. I’m Nick Fouriezos, an Open Campus national reporter who grew up at the crossroads of suburban Atlanta and the foothills of Appalachia.

Today’s Roadmap

01: Postcards: A Q&A with a Bates College professor who studies rural students and their college experiences

01: Postcards

Mara Casey Tieken began her career as a third-grade teacher in rural Tennessee, watching her students navigate small-town life with curiosity and intelligence. Years later, as a professor of eduction at Bates College, a private liberal arts school in Maine, she found herself wondering: Why weren't many of her former students attending schools like hers?

That question launched a multi-year research project following nine rural, first-generation college students as they navigated elite higher education. Her book "Educated Out: How Rural Students Navigate Elite Colleges—And What It Costs Them," was published by the University of Chicago Press earlier this year.

Tieken's research reveals how geography shapes college experiences in ways that go far beyond economics, creating barriers that push rural students away from their home communities while leaving them struggling to find their place in urban professional worlds. 

[Read more: In this shrinking Mississippi Delta county, getting a college degree means leaving home behind (via our partner Mississippi Today)]

I talked with her about how her findings challenge assumptions about college access and success, revealing the hidden costs of pursuing higher education far from home. This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Q: What surprised you most during your research?

Tieken: For me, it was really interesting to try to think about how geography specifically shaped the students’ experiences. 

The students often individualized it, so when they faced a barrier or a challenge, they often thought it was because they hadn't studied enough for the math test, or they just, you know, they're the ones that are kind of weird, not fitting in. 

They didn't often see how this was maybe a larger structural issue.

And when they did, they often wrote it off as class. Geography does matter, clearly. Yet we often really don't think about that as part of the opportunity structure. If you look at professors' syllabi, it's pretty urban-centric. Or if you look at admissions officers, outreach approaches, it favors urban areas. If you look at career counseling services or career services, they're really designed to put kids in cities or put graduates in cities.

Q: How does geography matter differently from class?

Class and geography are very much related. If you think about the availability of jobs or, we know, for example, that on the whole rural folks have lower incomes than non-rural folks. So is that geography? Is that class? It can feel like a fool's errand to really figure out which of those is which, but there are some components that are very much about geography.

[Read more: How this rural Wisconsin community college raised grads’ wages — and saved its accreditation (via our partner Wisconsin Watch]

Still, if you look at the admissions process, especially at elite schools, most of the schools are small, they don't have a huge admissions staff. They go to the places that are easier to reach, where they can get high yields. And so what that means is they don't go to many rural places because they're really hard to get to. And so that's a lot of time and cost and then they might only yield maybe one student. It's just not cost effective from an admissions perspective.

We also know that quality of K-12 education really matters. Many rural schools don't even have a counselor. So of course it's really hard to give good post-secondary guidance if you're not there, if there's not a counselor or if you're being shared across several buildings. AP classes — we know that varies by geography. It's hard to have a robust AP bio class when you've only got one student that's interested.

Q: What are some examples from your research?

One story is Sylvan, who came in being really focused on wanting to be a doctor. He was always a smart kid. Everyone always said, “One day, you’ll be a doctor.” He's taking all the science classes, doing really well. Then he has this moment of crisis. He's taking Latin classes too, and loving Latin classes. And he's like, should I continue to go forward with the sciences? Should I do Latin?

He ends up kind of abandoning the pre-doctor track for a whole variety of reasons. One of them being that he didn't get into this fast track pre-med program. 

[Read more: ‘Easy to just write us off’: Rural students’ options shrink as colleges slash majors (in partnership with The Hechinger Report)]

But what I really didn't see at the time was all the ways in which there were structural barriers to him completing his pre-med requirements. For this fast track program, he needed to have job shadows, internships that all pay very little. He couldn't do that. He was going back home and bartending because that's where he could make the most money.

So this is a kid that was sort of pushed out of the STEM fields, not for lack of having the academic chops or even for lack of preparation. For him, it was all those hidden costs of academia that really kept him out.

Fast forward a few years. He does end up returning to the sciences arena, and is considering job options. He opts for the one in the city that seems prestigious over a promising one back home. 

I do my last interview with him the October after graduation, and he's in tears, He misses home. “Even if I am there though, what am I going to do?” he’s asking. There are so few jobs, fewer still if you want to be able to earn a master’s or a Ph.D.

Plus, now he's experiencing some disconnect with his family just because they've had very different past four years while he was at college. I talk about how the students are educated out, and he is, but they also have trouble being in these other places too. They're kind of stuck in between.

Q: What changes would help rural students succeed at selective institutions?

There are a whole bunch of things that can be done. In terms of the admissions pipeline, admissions offices often think about geography in really superficial ways. "Yep, we got our kid from Idaho.” Not in ways that would allow us to think about spatial marginality. Are we getting kids from the places that probably have the most barriers or hurdles to overcome?

When we've got more students from those places, they don't feel as isolated when they're on campus. Maybe part of merit is overcoming these various kinds of geographic barriers.

In terms of experience on campus, reducing all the hidden costs of college. Making sure that when you are offering internships, they're paid at a level that would actually be competitive with what students could earn in blue collar jobs back home. One student returned home because he could make more money digging trenches than any of the opportunities related to what he was studying. 

All the students came because they wanted connections. Very few of them actually got connections, because connections at these elite institutions are often going through things like “Your roommate invites you to Cabo, and so then you're hanging out on the yacht with your roommate and their parents.” These students aren't being invited to those kinds of things.

I think there's a lot to do in our curriculum. Students read urban authors, they study cities. They often see really flat, one dimensional portrayals of rural places. They read "Hillbilly Elegy." I think there's a lot of curriculum that we can do to make sure that the portrayals of rural places, first, they're there and they're authentic and they don't reinforce stereotypes and continue to alienate rural students.

To sponsor a future newsletter, please email [email protected], or check out our advertising information page. Support my work with a donation to Open Campus. You can also help by sharing this newsletter with your friends. They can sign up for their own copy here.