More than 150 high school advisers from across Missouri gathered in Warrensburg this week to tour a hospital sterilization suite, a John Deere dealership, and a pediatric therapy clinic — not as visitors, but as students learning what local jobs look like from the inside. The training was organized by rootEd Alliance, a national nonprofit that places dedicated career advisers in rural high schools.
The idea is deliberate: if advisers understand what a radiation therapist or agricultural technician actually does day-to-day, they can translate that for a senior in Hume or Lathrop who has never set foot in a hospital or a John Deere tech bay.
“[They can] take this back and translate it for their own region: What do I have locally that offers similar types of careers or opportunities for my students, and how can I replicate a certain type of visit?” said Nicole Snider, regional director for rootEd Missouri. “It opens the door for them a little bit more to do some more digging on their own.”
The program targets a gap that researchers have documented for years. Rural youth make up roughly 20 percent of U.S. public school students, and they graduate from high school at higher rates than their urban counterparts — yet attend and complete college at significantly lower rates. The shortfall is not primarily about academic preparation. It is, in large part, about access to adult guidance at a critical moment.
Fourteen percent of rural schools have no school counselor at all, compared to 6 percent of urban schools, according to Brookings Institution research. Nationally, the average student-to-counselor ratio is 408 to one — the best in more than three decades, according to Education Week — yet still far above the 250-to-one ceiling recommended by the American School Counselor Association. Only 14 percent of school districts nationwide met that standard in the 2020-21 school year. Where rural counselors do exist, they frequently cover multiple schools and take on administrative duties, leaving little time for one-on-one career and college planning.
Brookings research also highlights a compounding factor: more than half of rural students have parents who expect them to pursue higher education, but whose own lower college graduation rates leave them less familiar with the application process — making a knowledgeable school-based adviser especially valuable.
rootEd tracks what its advisers are doing and surveys students each year. The organization’s analysis found that students with hands-on career experiences — industry visits, job shadowing — were nearly 10 percent more likely to report high certainty about their post-graduation plans than those who had only attended career fairs or heard guest speakers. In Missouri, the program runs in partnership with the state education department, Ozarks Technical Community College, and the Missouri Chamber of Commerce, with advisers assigned to meet with every senior in their school.
Tennessee’s state-run Advise TN program, which also places career advisers in rural high schools, reported that the likelihood of college enrollment rose by 6.4 percent specifically for rural students who worked with one of its advisers.
Employer partnerships are part of both programs’ models. In the Warrensburg area, Ag-Power — a John Deere dealership — offers students who enroll in the manufacturer’s TECH program a $4,000 starter tool chest and up to $10,000 in tuition reimbursement, paid out in $2,000 annual increments after graduation. A persistent obstacle: the nearest colleges offering the John Deere TECH curriculum are in Kansas and Nebraska, which limits how many local students pursue it.
That kind of geographic friction — opportunity nearby, but not near enough — is precisely what the advisers in Warrensburg were training to help students navigate.
Brittany Hendrick, marketing manager at The Pediatric Place in Knob Noster, a community of fewer than 3,000 residents, put the case directly to Daily Yonder reporter Emily Lytle: “I really wish that people knew they did not have to go to the city to have a good paying job. There are opportunities out there. You just have to look.”
The challenge for programs like rootEd and Advise TN is ensuring rural students don’t have to look alone.