‘Education deserts’ are a ‘staggering’ problem, and for-profit colleges are taking advantage – Yahoo Finance
It’s one thing to not be able to afford a college education. It’s an entirely different issue altogether when you don’t even have a college around you.
A recent report from Jain Family Institute (JFI) reveals that access to college isn’t just about the cost of college. Physical access to public higher education institutions across America has also been highly unequal.
Specifically, as detailed by JFI’s interactive map, regions in America’s West have little-to-no access to an institution of higher education, compared to the East Coast.
“One of the major takeaways when you’re looking at the map is the staggering amount of populated areas that are considered highly concentrated,” Laura Beamer, higher education finance project lead at JFI and one of the two authors of the study, told Yahoo Finance. “We figured out that roughly 2.4 million prospective students have access to most one public option nearby … Though financial access is extremely important, geographic access is also a very important piece of this dialogue and should be talked about more.”
The Rocky Mountain region “is the worst off,” the report added, “followed closely by the Plains region.”