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Abstract
Rural areas in the U.S. face the challenge of academically talented high school graduates who leave to pursue postsecondary education and often never return. This study assessed migration of 2007 and 2008 bachelor's degree graduates (N = 6,165) from a mid-south land grant university by college. Rural students enrolled in agricultural, food and life sciences (AFLS) (32.3%) at a significantly (p < 0.05) higher percentage than the university overall (26.9%). AFLS (21.1%) and engineering (19.4%) had significantly (p < 0.05) higher percentages of graduates currently living in rural areas than the university overall (15.3%). Rural AFLS graduates returned to rural communities at a significantly (p < 0.05) higher percentage (56.7%) than did rural graduates overall (45.1%). Overall, only 4.3% of graduates originally from non-rural areas were living in rural areas six or seven years after graduation; there were no significant (p > 0.05) differences by college. Rural communities experienced a net loss of 716 college-educated individuals over two academic years.
Introduction
Rural communities in the U.S. must deal with the effects of out-migration of young people to urban and suburban areas (USDA-ERS, 2014; Whitener and McGranahan, 2003). This exodus of youth from rural communities has been dubbed the rural brain drain as the most academically-able rural youth leave for college and often never return to rural communities (Carr and Kefalas, 2009; von Reichert et al., 2011). According to Lichter and Brown (2014), land grant universities should play a key role in enhancing economic, social and educational opportunities in rural communities. Yet, by their very natures, land grant universities are part of the mechanism whereby the most academically capable rural youth are enabled to leave rural communities, with potentially negative consequences for these communities (Artz and Yu, 2009).
Rural can be defined in a number of ways; a common USDA Economic Research Service (ERS) definition for rural is any county that is not considered metropolitan, meaning these counties contain no urban areas with populations greater than 49,999 (USDA, 2012). From virtually any perspective, Arkansas is a rural state, with 62 of the 75 counties classified as non-metropolitan in the 2010 census (University of Arkansas, 2013). From 1900 to 2010, Arkansas has consistently been home to a higher percentage of rural people than the nation...