Mara Casey Tieken's "Educated Out"

Mara Casey Tieken is professor of education at Bates College. She is the author of Why Rural Schools Matter.

Tieken applied the “Page 99 Test” to her latest book, Educated Out: How Rural Students Navigate Elite Colleges-And What It Costs Them, and shared the following:

The 99th page comes midway through the book, which follows nine rural, first-generation-to-college students as they enter and navigate an elite college that I call Hilltop. In a passage entitled “Access…” the page outlines the many opportunities and resources that Hilltop has: renowned professors, state-of-the-art science labs, an observatory, a new boathouse a few miles from campus. And it explains how the nine students take advantage of many of them, joining clubs, taking compelling classes, and competing on varsity teams.

The main point of the passage—and much of the book—comes a few pages later, though, in a section called “… with Limits.” As I write, “… the students work hard to capitalize on every opportunity, but oftentimes, their ‘Hilltop experience’ isn’t the same as their classmates’.”

Ultimately, the students find that their access to Hilltop’s numerous opportunities is quite limited; the resources exist, but many—the unpaid job shadows, the study abroad programs, the pricey textbooks—remain out of reach. And, as I describe in detail in the book, the students are navigating a world remarkably different from home. Home, with its different politics and different culture and different values, doesn’t feel very welcome at Hilltop.

So, the 99th page reflects part of the book’s core argument well: elite education is a thing of abundance. But these rural, first-generation students are only near that abundance. They remain on the outside, looking in, and that proximity likely makes the exclusion even harder.

Despite their limited access, these rural, first-generation students do well at Hilltop: they all graduate, some with honors and double majors. But, as they watch their wealthier, more urban classmates leverage connections to find jobs and apartments in large cities—where most jobs for college graduates are located—they realize that an elite degree may not open the doors they’d hoped.

These students were pushed to college by their parents, who understood the weakening rural economy and wanted them to have the stability and mobility they never did. An elite education should just raise their children’s chances of getting “a good job,” they reasoned. They knew that college would likely mean that their children would live adult lives far from home, and these parents made that sacrifice. So much hope and expectation rides on this college degree—and it’s not clear if the cost is worth it.

I bookend Educated Out with the current debate about college: is it worth it? Watching these students navigate Hilltop, I found my own faith in college waning. But when I asked the students, “Should everyone go to college?” they told me plainly that that’s the wrong question. “The controversy should be whether everyone has access to it or not, not whether everybody should go,” one said. “That is the issue we should be focused on: giving access to education—a good education.”

And right now, rural students don’t yet enjoy that kind of access.

Learn more about Educated Out at the University of Chicago Press website.

--Marshal Zeringue