Anti-Intellectualism and the Rural College Student

• In Event: “All of a Sudden, Rural Is on Everyone’s Mind”: Rural Education After Trump

Abstract

According to the Pew Research Center (2007), a majority of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (58%) report that colleges and universities have a negative effect on the country, a 45% increase from last year. While this issue has recently received attention in the popular press, a history of negative views of higher education is well documented among rural and working-class people (Weis, 2004; Stich & Freie, 2016). There are differences, however, between today’s view of higher education and those held by previous generations. Previous generations experienced anti-intellectualism based on concerns that the younger generation would be taught values that were at odds with those of their families and, particularly in the case of rural students, that their new careers would require them to relocate (Finn, 2008). In effect, higher education would result in their “learning to leave” (Corbett, 2007). Current popular discourse, however, suggests that colleges and universities are bastions of liberal thought ready to indoctrinate and recruit rural and/or working-class youth. Yet, largely driven by changing economic circumstances, rural and working-class youth are still attending college in larger numbers than in the past (US Dept of Ed, 2015). This discussion seeks to explore the ways rural college students and faculty experience and respond to anti-intellectualism and increasingly negative views of higher education.

Essential Questions:
To what extent is anti-intellectualism a relevant phenomenon in colleges and universities in rural contexts? How might growing partisan anti-intellectualism challenge rural students’ identities as they negotiate their own education in colleges and universities?

Author

• Carrie Freie, The Pennsylvania State University - Altoona