Re:Who's Missing from America's Colleges? Rural High School ...
by hueving on Friday February 23, 2018 @11:30AM
(#16447322)
>Democracy being what it is, most funding goes to the majority - which are in the city.
Democracy has to be more than two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner.
It's true that the majority can just vote to line their own pockets and leave the minority in squalor, but that leaves a pretty shitty country leftover. Many of these rural areas look like third-world countries and that's not something us urbanites should be proud of.
Scholarship money disproportionately goes to lower income students, but that doesn't mean we should stop giving them scholarship money.
Re:Who's Missing from America's Colleges? Rural High School ...
by ghaff on Thursday February 22, 2018 @07:21PM
(#16442946)
Note however that the census definition of "urban" is very broad. I live in a 7,000 population town and between myself and a few neighbors, we're on about 100 acres--not counting adjacent conservation land. We're urban according to the census.
Reality is that more people now live in urban areas[1]. Democracy being what it is, most funding goes to the majority - which are in the city. Add to that that setting up this infrastructure is often not cost effective for a private business (due to a lack of customers) and that most rural communities prefer less government intervention (ie less taxes), we have a situation where there is little impetus to invest in rural communities by private companies and governments (at least local) don't have funding to pay for service.
[1] https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2016/comm/acs-...