That’s the subject of a new post at The College Fix.

Editor Nathan Harden makes a compelling case.

Ivy League Schools Ignore the Rural Poor

Left-leaning Ivy League universities are proud of their commitment to “diversity.” But when they say “diversity” they are usually only thinking about skin color, possibly gender.

In the New York Times, Claire Vaye Watkins argues that if elite schools really are committed to diversity, they must extend their recruitment efforts to the rural poor of middle America:

A study released last week by researchers at Harvard and Stanford quantified what everyone in my hometown already knew: even the most talented rural poor kids don’t go to the nation’s best colleges. The vast majority, the study found, do not even try…

If top colleges are looking for a more comprehensive tutorial in recruiting the talented rural poor, they might take a cue from one institution doing a truly stellar job: the military.

I never saw a college rep at Pahrump Valley High, but the military made sure that a stream of alumni flooded back to our school in their uniforms and fresh flattops, urging their old chums to enlist…

One thing Watkins doesn’t say, but which is actually essential to her argument, is this: A big reason Ivy League schools aren’t reaching out to rural America is that rural America is disproportionately Caucasian. Poor white kids have never been the kind of “diversity” elite liberal institutions in the U.S. were looking for. These institutions draw their white p0pulation primarily from the elite, wealthy, private school kids from Boston to New York to D.C., and on the west coast from Seattle to San Francisco to Los Angeles.