Following Donald Trump’s election as president, “a sizable share of college admission directors say they have intensified efforts to recruit in rural areas and find more white students from low-income families,” says the Washington Post, based on a survey by Inside Higher Ed. “His campaign capitalized on heavy support from rural America and from white voters without college degrees — sectors of the population many colleges historically have struggled to reach.”
Some 38 percent of admissions directors who responded to the survey said they have stepped up rural recruitment and 30 percent said they are trying harder to recruit students from poor white families. The figure on rural recruitment was in line with the 36 percent who said the election showed colleges should try harder for rural students. Three-quarters of respondents said Trump’s election made it harder to bring international students to campus.
The editor of Inside Higher Ed told the Post that colleges did some soul-searching after Trump’s victory because of the deep divide between urban and rural areas, which were key to Trump’s victory. “It is not good if you’re a public or private institution and if only suburbanites think of you as a great place to go to college.”