How does an Advanced Placement program begin in a rural high school? In Clear Fork, West Virginia, it took an ambitious student, observant classmates, and a supportive, energetic teacher.
The high price of gas is making it tough for rural community college students to continue their studies, according to an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education. "Food and shelter — that's what we're hearing from the students who are withdrawing," says Paul Kraft, director of student services at the University of New Mexico at Gallup, a two-year institution in the high desert of western New Mexico.
Community colleges are doing more courses online or on camera. Some students are trying to cram all their courses into one day of dawn to dark work. And others, of course, just drop out.
Students driving across Yonder have problems city residents can't imagine. One West Texas student would like to drive a smaller car, but she's hit three deer in the last three years. She takes her pickup on the 70-mile trip from Big Lake to Big Spring "because it's just safer."
The ban on school prayer and out-migration have shrunk the senior class of Middlesboro High School. Judy Owens (Class of 1974) gets unsentimental at a beloved nephew's graduation.
The University of Kentucky College of Medicine will set ten students on a new Rural Physician Leadership Track this fall.
Students will train for two years at the College of Medicine in Lexington, then move to Morehead State University for two more years of study, to include business courses in setting up a rural practice. Ten students will start on the rural physician track in August.
"We have to get them with the role models who've actually done it," Dr. Jay Perman, dean of the College of Medicine, told the Lexington Herald-Leader.
Kentucky has fewer doctors per capita than the national average, and rural Kentucky lags further behind. "About 43 percent of Kentucky residents live in rural areas, but less than 25 percent of doctors practice in rural areas."
A year-long study of health in rural Michigan likewise found that "recruitment and retention of health-care providers" is the top priority.