Rural Appalachian Poverty and barriers to 4 year Post-secondary education enrollment

Rural Appalachian students face ever growing barriers to post-secondary enrollment with little research to guide them. This presentation addresses some of those barriers and reinforces the need for more research in this area. It\u27s raining in the library, there\u27s puddles in the halls. There\u27s coal dust in my text books, and you could punch holes in these walls. But the state ain\u27t got the money to fix up this old school, so I\u27m going to the next county and jump in their olympic pool. As the first verse in the song Ballad of Nathan DeRolph suggests, Appalachian schools are suffering and as a result so are the students who attend them. Although residents of Appalachia know this there is little research in the field to turn to for guidance. There is much research on the effect of poverty on education; however most of the existing literature focuses on urban poverty and primary school age children. There is much to be studied on the barriers that poverty creates to the enrollment of rural Appalachian high school students in four year post-secondary institutions. This paper is a literature review that demonstrates some of the barriers that students face and reinforces the need for new research in the area of post-secondary attainment for rural Appalachian Students