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The educational attainment of rural people differs considerably based upon peoples' races and ethnicities. For example, in 2015 twice as many White rural adults had a bachelor's degree or higher compared to Black, American Indian and Alaska Native, and Hispanic or Latino rural adults. Within higher education contexts if one is to understand college students and their experiences, a recognition of students' identities is necessary. For African American college students from rural areas, I argue a starting point for understanding these students and their experiences in college environments is an exploration of the intersection of their place-based and race/ethnicity-based identities. This chapter, therefore, provides statistics about the educational attainment of rural people, reviews rural place–based identity literature, and then integrates perceptions of place with perceptions of race and ethnicity. Based on this discussion, recommendations for future pedagogies, practices, and research are suggested for faculty, staff, and scholars.

Identifying and measuring personality traits assists to understanding professional career choices, however, what impact personality traits have on nursing student rural career choice remains absent. The purpose of this paper is to identify personality traits among nursing students that may be predictive of pursuing a rural career.

A cross-sectional design was used to examine the importance Bachelor of Nursing students place on undertaking rural careers. All nursing students (n=1,982) studying a three-year bachelor’s degree were invited to complete a questionnaire examining personality traits and rural practice intentions.

Students who saw themselves working rurally after graduation had higher levels of conscientiousness than those who wanted metropolitan careers. Students with higher levels of agreeableness or open-mindedness were more likely to consider rural practice when individual community factors were carefully considered. Finally, students with higher levels of neuroticism were less likely to consider rural practice as a future career pathway.

The cohort had high numbers of student from rural and regional settings, which may limit the ability to generalise the findings. In addition, student respondents of the survey may not be representative of the whole student cohort given the low response rate.

Key personality traits are identifying factors that contribute to nursing student decision making regarding rural practice. Students who displayed higher levels of agreeableness and conscientiousness and open-mindedness have traits that are most likely to impact the consideration of rural practice across their nursing career, which gives additional insight into targeted recruitment strategies.

The purpose of this paper is to know the frequency, place, and purpose of use of computer. It also aimed to know the various problems faced by the students in using the computer and to know the reasons for not using computer by rural and urban students.

A total of the 2,592 sample population were selected from 64 rural and urban high schools of two districts of Karnataka state. A structured questionnaire was used for the data collection and data have been analyzed using Software Package for Social Science. Statistical tests, namely, χ² and one-way ANOVA were applied to test the formulated hypotheses.

The results of the study showed that only 20.66 percent rural students and 69.70 percent of urban students used computer for various academic purposes. Further, most of the rural and urban students opined that “electric power failure” and “lack of computer” skills were major problem in using computer.

Today, the computer education in schools plays an important role in student’s career development and enhances the quality of learning among students. Thus, the local government/school authorities may provide the minimum ICT infrastructure in both schools and more particularly in rural schools.

The nature of rural living is often characterized as remote, limited in social and academic experiences and opportunities, and predominantly White and low income. For Black gifted students, these characterizations define daily isolation and alienation, accompanied by racially oppressive conditions that cause stress and give constant reminders of their oppressed group status, despite their high intellectual, academic, affective, and creative potential. These conditions, coupled with the misnomer that being a rural student means that one must be from the dominant culture, render them invisible on many social and demographic variables. Most scholarly research related to rural education focuses on one demographic – poor White students from Appalachian, Midwest, or Southern communities. While most of the literature focuses on this demographic, the majority of Black gifted students living in rural areas are located in the southern region of the United States. The Black rural community, including Black gifted students, is almost invisible in literature explicating the conditions of rural education in America. This chapter takes an updated look at Black gifted students in rural America based on our previous work on this population. We explore where these students reside, the traits that make them unique, which includes attention to culture, and make recommendations for future research and programming to meet their intellectual, academic, creative, and psychosocial needs with attention to access, equity, and excellence.

As the most racially diverse postsecondary sector, community college student populations are heavily Black and Brown. It is well settled that for every student credit hour earned, a financial reward is generated; however, it is not until individuals attain a baccalaureate degree that they tend to have the socioeconomic power to pull themselves and their families out from poverty. Looking specifically at mathematics achievement and self-efficacy, I examine differences among pathways by institutional level—two-year, four-year, other, or no postsecondary education—and find that there is a division in the mathematics achievement and self-efficacy of Black rural Americans (US) who attend four-year institutions as compared to all others. Thus, while policies advancing free community college may enhance the visibility and perceived affordability of community colleges for Black rural Americans (US), to reduce poverty there needs to be greater attention to the mathematics achievement and self-efficacy in K-12 education.

Low levels of human capital in rural China are rooted in the poor schooling outcomes of elementary school students. The purpose of this paper is to provide insight into the distribution of academic performance in rural China and identify vulnerable groups.

The authors draw on a data set of 25,892 observations constructed from 11 school-level surveys spanning nine provinces and one municipality in China conducted from 2013 to 2015.

The authors find that the distribution of academic performance is uneven across provinces and subgroups. In general, male students, Han, living in richer counties, living with their parents and studying in rural public schools do better academically than female students, non-Han, living in poorer counties, left behind and studying in private migrant schools in cities.

Using the results of this study, policymakers should be able to better target investments into rural education focusing on at risk subpopulations.

With limited data sources, the research on the academic performance of students in rural China is largely absent. The findings of this study help to fill the gaps in the literature base.

Recent educational research has demonstrated rural‐urban gaps in achievement and schooling conditions. Evidence from developing countries is still sparse. This study seeks to report rural‐urban disparities in achievement, student, teacher, and school characteristics based on a nationally representative sample of grade four students from four provinces of Pakistan. The study aims to take into account the limitations of previous research, mainly the issues of non‐representative samples and inadequate sampling techniques, by using proportionally adequate sample to address the potential differences in achievement of rural and urban students and how schooling, students and teacher‐related factors account for gap in achievement.

The primary data source for the study was the 2006 national assessment survey of year four students in government school across four provinces in four core subjects. The sample design included a two‐stage stratified random sample, where the major strata of national interest were student and school gender, geographical location and region. First stage involved selecting schools and in the second stage students were selected from schools. The procedure of estimation involved computing the average of each group's achievement scores and attached standard errors, the gap of standard errors and statistical significance of standard errors at 0.05 level.

The results show that rural and urban students had comparable levels of achievement in some of the tested learning areas. In Balochistan province, rural students outperformed their urban counterparts in three out of the four tested subjects. In Punjab and Sindh, urban students performed significantly better in social studies and language tests; scores on social studies and language did not differ significantly across location in the North West. The differences appeared to be partly explained by variation in schooling conditions, students' home background, and teachers' characteristics. Teachers' training turned out to be decisive in determining students' achievement, whereas availability of resources and multi‐grade teaching was less important.

Recent educational research from around the world has demonstrated rural‐urban gaps in achievement and schooling conditions. Evidence from developing countries is still sparse. This study is the first attempt to report rural‐urban disparities in academic achievement, student, teacher, and school characteristics based on a nationally representative sample. The study has employed an appropriate sampling strategy and proportionally adequate sample to address the potential differences in achievement of rural and urban students in four provinces. The findings could therefore be used to guide policy interventions in areas of curriculum differences, schooling conditions, teachers' training and multi‐grade teaching across provinces.

This study aims to understand the expectations of rural students with respect to their computer access and use. It also made an attempt to learn the expectations of rural students from their schools and local government in providing the information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure.

Interview schedules were used to collect the necessary data from the rural students. The interview schedules consisted of various questions that were designed to elicit the expectations of rural students in terms of their usage of computers. A total of 300 interview schedules were collected from the students, and data were analyzed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (Windows 19.0 version) to test the formulated hypothesis.

This study clearly showed that 72 per cent of female and 63.33 per cent of male students have not used a computer. Most of the students opined that lack of support from teachers (91.57 per cent = Male, 94.25 per cent = Female) and non-availability of computers at home and schools (82.10 per cent = Male, 80.55 per cent = Female) were the main reasons for not using the computer. A notable finding of the study was that 93.68 per cent of male and 95.37 per cent of female students were interested in using a computer. Most of the students opined that the state/local government should establish computer laboratories and provide Internet facilities in rural schools.

This paper has provided useful empirical data regarding the expectations of rural students with respect to their access and use of computers. The results of this study will be more helpful to school authority and government in providing necessary ICT infrastructure to rural schools.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate computer literacy competencies among rural and urban students in India and its prime objectives are to find out: how rural and urban students use computers, what is the purpose of computers for these students and what problems have the students encountered while using computers.

Scheduled interviews were conducted to collect necessary data from rural and urban students. The interview schedules consisted of various questions designed to elicit details about the students’ use of computers. A total of 600 interview schedules were collected and data were analyzed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences for windows to test the formulated hypothesis.

The findings of the study indicate that the infrastructural facilities varied among rural and urban schools. Another notable finding of the study was that majority (91.33 percent) of urban students used computers compared to a significantly less percentage of rural students (32.33 percent). Most rural students have not used computers mainly because they do not know how to (49.75 percent) followed by lack of support from teachers (48.76 percent) and non-availability of computers in their schools (48.27 percent). Electrical power failure was another major problem faced by both urban students (31.75 percent) and rural students (40.20 percent).

This study attempted to learn about the computer literacy competencies among the students and the digital divide in Indian schools. On the basis of the findings, the study has recommended guidelines to bridge the digital gap. These findings and recommendations will potentially be helpful to school authorities and the government in order to take the necessary measurements to bridge the digital gap between the rural and urban students.

With the rise in the opportunity to go to college, the purpose of this paper is to identify if China's rural poor are being excluded from the university system, and if so, why.

Two sets of the authors' own primary survey data were used: a group of randomly selected high school students in Shaanxi Province and a census of all freshmen entering into four universities in Sichuan, Anhui and Shaanxi. The intention was to show if the rate of the rural poor attending universities is lower than that of urban students and that of rural non‐poor; also to identify the barriers to education (if they exist) that are keeping enrollment rates low for the rural poor. The authors used ordinary least squares method to make the estimations.

Matriculation rate of the poor into college was found to be substantially lower than the students from non‐poor families. Clearly, barriers exist that are excluding the rural poor; however, the authors demonstrate that the real barriers are not at the point of college admissions, but before students have even matriculated into high school.

This is the first empirical work which studies the barriers that keep the poor out of university.