Educated Out

“Educated Out masterfully reframes the debate on college access, exposing the profound spatial inequities that deny rural students the opportunity to pursue higher education, while elevating the resilience and unique perspectives they bring to campus. Vividly illustrating the rural student experience, Tieken dismantles stereotypes that rural students and their families lack ambition or simply don’t value education, offering a bold and incisive call for a more equitable system that uplifts rural life without reinforcing cycles of injustice.” – Nicholas F. Jacobs, Colby College
“Dr. Tieken tells a powerful story of the sacrifices rural students and their families make to pursue the American Dream. Educated Out reveals hidden truths about our education system and shows how much colleges can learn from rural students and the places they call home.” – Nicholas Hillman, University of Wisconsin-Madison
“How do working class rural kids get into an elite college, make it through to graduation. Then do they move on to claim the rewards promised in the meritocracy? In this accessible, lucid and careful ethnography, we journey with Mara Tieken and nine rural youth through complex, often lonely, and ironically resistant identity work and relationship management they face in elite tertiary education. This book offers no easy meritocratic or boot-strap formulas. What it does offer are rich, situated accounts of the lived experience of young people moving between emotional, social, and physical geographies. It also offers inspiration and hope while illustrating, theoretically and empirically, the multiple place-based, social and cultural barriers, identity gymnastics, and the constellation of factors that must align in order for first generation rural youth to gain entry and thrive/survive in an institution not made for them. In the end, the question remains: ‘was it worth it?’ Tieken’s compelling answer to this question is perhaps the most important contribution of this fine book.” – Michael Corbett, Acadia University
“Mara Tieken is one of our most important contemporary voices in the scholarship around rural education. Her new book, Educated Out, represents a must-read for anyone interested in spatial inequities and higher education access for rural youth. The questions and issues that Tieken explores here are all the more salient given America’s growing cultural and political divisions that are both rural-urban in nature and place our educational system increasingly into the ‘Culture War’ crosshairs.” – Kai A. Schafft, Penn State University
“This book offers a complex and eloquent analysis of the struggles rural youth face to make it work in college and at home… . Rarely do we see research that follows individuals for an extensive period of time, interviewing them and their significant ones several times, and building a research intimacy that provides space to unearth stories which transcend individuality. Against the objectification of the present, Tieken with her longitudinal and qualitative research, renders visible how rural young people make meaning of everyday life and use resources to build their biographies over time. Ultimately, Tieken paints a nuanced and insightful picture of growing up rural in America, contributing significantly to the rural education and sociological imagination.” * Australian and International Journal of Rural Education *

From the perspectives of past students, idealistic respondents, and motivated parents,Tieken offers a nuance and appreciation for rurality, resilience, and hope. By detailing the personal triumphs and obstacles that many rural families must overcome in their pursuit of economic mobility, this book artfully calls for renewed investment in rural communities and greater institutional support for rural students. While college may not be the universal solution to economic mobility, this book offers an optimistic yet realistic account of what rural, first-generation students can achieve when given equitable opportunities.

This book offers a complex and eloquent analysis of the struggles rural youth face to make it work in college and at home. It is about big debates in education and society, about the role of geography and the socially just face of education and America. It demystifies media and popular discourses that devalue rural people and places and provides a thoughtful account of the challenges, costs and opportunities for rural youth to “study up” at an elite urban institution. Its power, for me, also relies on the author’s astute sociological insights, her sophisticated prose, and in the qualitative longitudinal aspect of the study. Rarely do we see research that follows individuals for an extensive period of time, interviewing them and their significant ones several times, and building a research intimacy that provides space to unearth stories which transcend individuality. Against the objectification of the present, Tieken with her longitudinal and qualitative research, renders visible how rural young people make meaning of everyday life and use resources to build their biographies over time. Ultimately, Tieken paints a nuanced and insightful picture of growing up rural in America, contributing significantly to the rural education and sociological imagination.

“We are indebted to Tieken for not only giving voice to rural students but also bringing rural life into the spotlight of sociological inquiry. Educated Out is a book that permits many different reads, from the perspective
of researchers, educators, and practitioners. And in each, we learn something new about the world we live in, especially the corners of it that we too frequently overlook.

Mara Casey Tieken is associate professor of education at Bates College. She is the author of Why Rural Schools Matter.

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