How to Recruit Rural Students to Your Institution

Only 29% of rural young adults are enrolled in higher education, 19 percentage points lower than their urban peers. That’s not a pipeline problem. It’s an opportunity your institution is almost certainly missing.

For enrollment leaders watching demographic projections with growing concern, rural students represent one of the largest underserved populations in American higher education. They graduate high school at rates higher than urban students (90% vs. 82%), yet they enroll in college at significantly lower rates. The gap between potential and enrollment isn’t about capability. It’s about access, awareness, and—critically—whether your institution has made a compelling case that leaving home is worth the risk.

The Rural Enrollment Paradox

Here’s what makes rural recruitment both challenging and promising: these students are prepared but underinformed, capable but underrecruited.

Consider the data:

• Rural high school graduation rates exceed urban rates by 8 percentage points
• Yet immediate college enrollment dropped from 61% in 2016 to 55% in 2022 for rural students
• Only 33% of rural adults believe a four-year degree is worthwhile
• 13 million Americans live in “education deserts” with no college within commuting distance

The STARS College Network (Small Town and Rural Students) found that when top institutions actively recruited rural high schools, they reached over 700,000 students across 1,100 schools in 49 states. Most of those schools had never received a college recruitment visit before.

The students exist. They’re qualified. They’ve simply been invisible to most enrollment strategies.

Why Standard Recruitment Fails in Rural Communities

Most institutional recruitment strategies are built around urban and suburban assumptions that don’t transfer to rural contexts:

Geographic assumptions. Your campus visit model assumes students can easily travel to you. But for students 200+ miles from your campus, often without reliable transportation, a campus visit requires significant family coordination, cost, and time off work. Virtual programming helps, but it requires broadband access that many rural communities lack.

Information asymmetry. Urban and suburban students often have parents, older siblings, or community members who attended college and can explain the process. Rural first-generation students lack this social capital. They may not know what a FAFSA is, what “yield” means, or how to evaluate whether a school is genuinely affordable. Guidance counselors in rural high schools carry caseloads averaging 310 students, and as high as 574 in rural Michigan, leaving little time for individualized college advising.

Cultural mismatch signals. Your website, marketing materials, and campus culture likely signal urbanity in ways you haven’t noticed: skyline photos, subway maps, emphasis on “city life” amenities. For a student from a small town, these signals can communicate “this isn’t for people like you” before they’ve even researched your programs.

Political and values concerns. Recent research shows both conservative and liberal students are willing to pay over $2,000 more to attend institutions where they perceive political alignment. Rural students—who more often come from conservative communities—may perceive your institution as unwelcoming based on how you discuss (or avoid) viewpoint diversity. This isn’t about changing your values. It’s about signaling that intellectually curious students from diverse backgrounds are genuinely welcome.

Five Strategies That Actually Work

1. Partner with Rural High Schools—Before They Need You

The rootEd Alliance places advisors directly in rural high schools to help students develop post-graduation plans. The STARS Network sends institutional representatives to schools that have never received a college visit. Western Illinois University received federal funding specifically to support rural first-year students through academic and career advising.

The pattern: successful rural recruitment requires sustained presence, not annual drive-bys.

Action step: Identify rural high schools within your realistic recruitment geography. Build relationships with counselors and administrators before recruitment season. Offer resources that help them—SAT/ACT prep materials, FAFSA workshops, virtual information sessions—rather than simply asking for access to their students.

2. Create Summer Bridge and Pre-Enrollment Experiences

Research from Appalachian State found that rural students who visited a college campus during middle school or high school were significantly more likely to enroll in postsecondary education. Summer bridge programs show students “what college could look like” before they commit.

Washington University’s Heartland Initiative includes an all-expenses-paid summer program for rural high school students to connect with faculty and staff from similar backgrounds. The investment signals serious commitment—and creates cohorts of students who arrive already knowing each other.

Action step: Design pre-enrollment programming specifically for rural students. Cover travel costs. Connect incoming students with faculty, staff, and current students from rural backgrounds. Build community before they arrive.

3. Address the “Brain Drain” Question Directly

Rural students often feel caught between competing loyalties: the desire to pursue opportunity and the pull of home and family. Research shows that “attachment to one’s hometown” significantly limits college options for rural students—not because they can’t leave, but because leaving feels like betrayal.

Institutions that succeed with rural students address this tension explicitly rather than ignoring it. They show students that higher education can prepare them to return and contribute to their communities—or to build meaningful lives elsewhere without severing those connections.

Action step: In recruitment materials and conversations, acknowledge the complexity of leaving home. Feature alumni who have returned to rural communities. Discuss remote work opportunities that didn’t exist a generation ago. Don’t pretend the decision to leave is simple—respect the real trade-offs students are navigating.

4. Build Belonging Infrastructure Before Students Arrive

Rural students face identity challenges on campus that mirror those of other underrepresented populations. Research consistently finds they struggle with “suddenly being recast as an outsider in their home communities” while also feeling out of place at institutions where most students come from urban and suburban backgrounds.

The Rural Student Alliance at the University of Chicago provides a space for rural students to connect, share experiences, and build community. Summer bridge programs that emphasize belonging—not just academic preparation—show higher retention effects.

The Kessler Scholars Program, which supports first-generation, limited-income students, found that peer mentoring is most effective when mentees are paired with mentors from similar backgrounds with consistent, intentional interaction. The same principle applies to rural students: they need to see people like themselves succeeding at your institution.

Action step: Create formal and informal supports for rural students. Train career advisors to ask about hometown, family expectations, and the “stay or go” question. Connect incoming rural students with current students and alumni from similar backgrounds. Recognize rural identity as an aspect of diversity worth celebrating.

5. Align Career Services with Rural Students’ Goals

Rural students often have different career orientations than their urban peers. Research shows they tend toward practical, outcome-focused thinking about education—they want to know that their degree will lead to stable employment, not just personal growth.

They may also be navigating family expectations about “useful” careers and concerns about job markets in their home regions. Career services that assume all students want to work for Fortune 500 companies in major metros will miss these students entirely.

Research on serving rural students recommends career advisors use exploratory questions focused on social background (“Tell me about your hometown,” “Do you want to go back when you graduate?”) and that staff familiarize themselves with career development paradigms appropriate for this population.

Action step: Train career services staff to understand rural students’ contexts and constraints. Connect students with employers who hire in rural regions—healthcare systems, agricultural companies, regional employers who value local roots. Show clear pathways from degree to employment in terms that resonate with practical, outcome-focused thinking.

The Political Reality You Can’t Ignore

There’s no avoiding this: rural communities skew more conservative than your campus probably does. Pew Research found that a majority of adults (59%) believe politics on college campuses lean toward a particular viewpoint, with 77% of those respondents saying campuses lean liberal. Republicans were much more likely than Democrats to see this political leaning as a major problem.

This doesn’t mean you need to change your institutional values. But it does mean being honest about how you discuss viewpoint diversity, how you present your campus culture, and whether students who hold minority political opinions on your campus will feel safe expressing their views.

FIRE data shows significant variation in campus political diversity. Some institutions—particularly large state schools like Oklahoma State, Clemson, Penn State, and Alabama—have relative parity between liberal and conservative students. Others have ratios as high as 85:1.

If your institution leans heavily in one political direction, rural students (and their parents) will likely know. The question is whether you signal genuine welcome for intellectual diversity or confirm concerns that they won’t belong.

Action step: Review your communications for signals—intentional or not—about political culture. Ensure recruitment materials reflect diverse perspectives. Train admissions staff to discuss viewpoint diversity honestly. Create spaces for constructive dialogue across difference rather than homogeneous political culture.

The Bottom Line

Rural students represent an underserved population with high potential and significant barriers to enrollment. Institutions that invest in rural recruitment aren’t just diversifying their student bodies—they’re accessing talent that competitors are systematically overlooking.

But this isn’t a quick fix. Rural recruitment requires relationship-building before recruitment season, support systems that address rural students’ specific challenges, and institutional honesty about whether your campus culture will feel welcoming to students from small towns with different backgrounds and perspectives.

The demographic cliff is real. The competition for students is intensifying. And 13 million potential students live in communities that most institutions have never meaningfully recruited.

The question isn’t whether to recruit rural students. It’s whether you’re willing to do the sustained work required to reach them.

Recruiting from underserved populations requires research-based strategy, not assumptions. At Frankel, we help institutions understand their actual market position and develop evidence-based recruitment strategies that reach students competitors are missing. If you’re ready to explore what rural recruitment could look like for your institution, let’s talk.