Rural Resistance: How Cultural Wealth Sustains Students’ Persistence in Postsecondary Pathways

• In Event: AERA Research in Progress Roundtable Session Three
  In Invited Roundtable: Research-in-Progress RT018 (Friday)

Abstract

Rural college students persist through complex intersections of race, class, and place that shape their postsecondary experiences. Grounded in Yosso’s (2005) Community Cultural Wealth, Crumb et al.’s (2022) Rural Cultural Wealth, and Tinto’s (1993) Student Integration Theory, this qualitative study draws on interviews with fifteen rural seniors from diverse racial and socioeconomic backgrounds. Findings reveal that students’ persistence is sustained by aspirational, familial, and navigational capital anchored in close community bonds, intergenerational support, and faith-based resilience. Simultaneously, participants confront persistent barriers, including economic precarity, geographic isolation, and limited institutional resources. Centering the voices and lived experiences of rural students of color, this study reframes persistence as an act of cultural resistance and contributes to equity-centered understandings of rural higher education.

Author

• Giovanna Lorenzi Pinto, Texas State University