On college fairs in rural America (where they are rare, special, valued, and highly valuable)

I loved this piece from Eric Hoover in the Chronicle of Higher Education last week.  It's set in northern Arizona, with the college fair actually taking place in Flagstaff and the featured student from Holbrook, population 5,053, county seat of Navajo County, population 107,449.  

The only blurb you get for free from the Chronicle is this:

This regional gathering attracts teenagers from small-town high schools that few admissions officers ever visit. Here’s how it changed one student’s perspective on college.

But here's a bit more from the story:

Someone had to get everything ready for tomorrow night’s big college fair, hosted by Flagstaff High School. Each fall, the event attracts about 100 institutions of all kinds. Teenagers from far-flung towns — towns that few, if any, admissions officers ever visit — travel many miles to grab some brochures, shake some hands, and, if they’re lucky, learn something that helps them reach the right campus. Or any campus at all.

A college fair might seem superfluous in places where colleges abound. But in this mostly rural swath of the Southwest, where many families don’t live close to a single four-year campus, the Northern Arizona Region College Night spans the distance between higher education and a realm it often overlooks. For some lucky students, applying to college is routine; in outposts such as Lake Havasu City, Prescott, and Winslow, it can feel like tackling a riddle in a foreign tongue.

* * *

Whether you live amid Northern Arizona’s pine-rich forests, or in its sprawling deserts, or at the far corner of one of its many Indian reservations, you’re welcome to come join the bustling pre-college spectacle.

But first you have to find a ride.

That featured student, Jade Knight, who barely overcame transport obstacles to make it to the fair, learned there that she could study biomedical engineering at the University of New Mexico and pay less there than she would in Arizona.  It was truly a win-win--and one that she seemingly would not have learned about had she been left to rely on resources in Navajo County, where she lives in a community called Woodruff, population 191.  Just reading the Holbrook students' banter about the Flagstaff school's swimming pool is interesting because it illustrates the difference between schools the size of Holbrook and that in a regional center like Flagstaff, which has no doubt experienced rural gentrification in recent years, thanks to migration to Grand Canyon ecotourism and such.  Yet urban folks have no idea about such distinctions, seeing all of "rural" northern Arizona as homogeneous and--sadly--also somewhat boring.

As someone who went to a public school so small that we had no counselor and did not attract college recruiters, this story really spoke to me.  As an adult--and especially because I move (which is really to say I subsist) in elite academic circles--I have found many folks who just can't understand why I didn't go to a "good college."  What they don't understand is that I went to the best--and best value for money--college in my region/for me.  And as one of two students in my high school class who went to college right away and earned a four-year degree, I'm darn proud of what I did. Indeed,  I was valedictorian of the entire University of Arkansas as a graduating B.A. student in 1986.  It's depressing to be viewed by folks in my current world as a failure for making lemonade from lemons, all while asking why I didn't instead make a princess torte.