Rural community college students face unique difficulties in higher education for many reasons, including the resources they typically have access to, their collective histories, and in many cases, the preparation they received in high school. These challenges might be low-performing secondary schools, a lack of tradition and precedence in…

Community colleges in rural environments provide a variety of services. There is a great deal of documentation supporting those services that are academic and economic. The noneconomic and nonacademic results of community college activities, however, have an undocumented yet significant impact on local communities. The current study focused on how…

This chapter describes how rural community colleges use continuing education and other noncredit activities to provide key services to their surrounding communities that aid in creating group identity and engagement in the larger community.

Eight challenges for rural vocational education in community colleges include (1) inadequate state funding; (2) higher professional development costs; (3) higher business costs; (4) difficulty assessing labor market needs; (5) flooding the market with graduates; (6) focus on preserving local culture; (7) difficulty launching new programs; and (8)…

This paper examines the perceptions and attitudes of the faculty of a rural community college about their institution's mission. The college serves a 19-county area in central Alabama, characterized by high rates of illiteracy, unemployment, and poverty. Surveys were completed by 74 of the 100 faculty members. Faculty generally supported their…

Rural America, in direct competition with growing suburban and urban America, has struggled to maintain a high quality of life. Rural out-migration levels are high, as are poverty and illiteracy rates. Rural community colleges have worked to defend and expand opportunities in rural settings, yet face their own challenges tied to resources,…