The Rural Brain Drain

What is going on in small-town America? The nation’s mythology of small towns comes to us straight from the The Music Man’s set designers. Many Americans think about flyover country or Red America only during the culture war’s skirmishes or campaign season. Most of the time, the rural crisis takes a back seat to more visible big-city troubles. So while there is a veritable academic industry devoted to chronicling urban decline, small towns’ struggles are off the grid.

And yet, upon close inspection, the rural and urban downturns have much in common, even though conventional wisdom casts the small town as embodiment of all that is right with America and the inner city as all that is wrong with it.

By Patrick J. Carr and Maria J. Kefalas

Full Story: http://chronicle.com/article/The-Rural-Brain-Drain/48425/?mc_cid=a5b81f8ff2&mc_eid=dfa0607b67