
Alex Milan Tracy for Underscore
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The dozens of independent, nonprofit and nonpartisan news organizations that make up the Rural News Network are developing the broadest news alliance reporting on rural America. These newsrooms are pursuing coverage that provides a more complete picture of what it means to live and work in these communities.
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LATEST NEWS FROM THE NETWORK
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Rethinking everything to better capture rural success
January 31, 2025
A conversation about how new rankings will affect rural institutions.
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To spur a rural rebound, one Minnesota county is paying college athletes to promote it
April 27, 2024
Recruiting new talent is a matter of survival for Otter Tail and other rural counties across America that face population decline, labor shortages, and widening skill gaps.
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Want a degree without classes and lectures? California community colleges test a new approach
September 12, 2023
In theory, this model, known as “competency-based education,” could provide students with more flexibility and the potential to attain degrees faster in key job sectors. The pilot is geared toward working adults, many of whom left community colleges at record rates during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Disparities persist in California’s transfer process
July 24, 2023
Among the community colleges with the lowest transfer rates, 60 percent are rural, and some are hours away from the nearest four-year institution.
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‘Everybody assumes that it’s like the rest of California and it’s not’: Rural LGBTQ students and administrators describe campus strife.
June 15, 2023
In rural Siskiyou County, where California meets Oregon, the local community college is hiding its LGBTQ+ center behind closed doors.
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A rural town, a fleeing flagship, and a faltering faith in higher ed
May 25, 2023
The growing rift between the public and their universities is especially felt in places like Montgomery, W. Va., where people feel they’re not valued.
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Native Hawaiians are overrepresented in prisons. Here’s how cultural education could help.
May 21, 2023
Among other states with significant overrepresentation of Indigenous people are Alaska, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming and Utah, according to a recent report by the nonprofit Prison Policy Initiative. Native women in particular have higher incarceration rates than the general population.
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California inmates depended on community colleges. What happens when their prisons close?
May 18, 2023
The state’s shrinking prison population — down from 160,000 prisoners in 2011 to 96,000 prisoners as of May 10 — has also created an unexpected problem for the state’s community college system, which has developed special programs to help prisoners earn degrees.
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Black male teachers are rare. Louisiana’s HBCUs hope to change that.
May 12, 2023
Nicholas Cobb teaches fourth-grade math in Arcadia – a small Louisiana town of about 2,700 people. He’s just one example of the influence Black male teachers can have on Black students.
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