Living Below the Policy Line: Black, Rural Students’ Laboring Practices for Accessing College

Abstract

The college access policy landscape across Alabama, U.S., has gained traction in K-12 schools and higher education institutions over the last few years. In Spring 2021, the Alabama State Board of Education approved a resolution to require all seniors to complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). In Fall 2025, the state began implementing its Alabama Direct Admission Initiative, a partnership between dozens of 2-year and 4-year in-state institutions to streamline college application processes for all seniors. Advocates of both anticipate an increase in college enrollment, particularly for students who have previously faced issues with financing postsecondary education. Despite such policies and initiatives, Black, rural students in Alabama still face unique challenges to college access. This paper addresses the following questions: How do Black, rural students access postsecondary education in Alabama? How do Black, rural students perceive and experience college access policies? What role does policy enactment play in Black, rural students’ college access experiences? Using a multi-site case study approach, we present insights gleaned from 16 virtual focus groups with students across five higher education institutions in Alabama. Findings from this study highlight how Black, rural students engage in three types of labor associated with college-going: assessment labor, simulation labor, and capacity-building labor.

1. Introduction

Living below the policy line is a play on words inspired by the idea and reality of living below the poverty line. The poverty line represents a threshold by which economists, politicians, and government offices delineate who falls below a predetermined income level. The expression is just as much discursive as it is economic, insofar as the line often functions as a straight, long path of (generational poverty) with no endpoints, much like a line in mathematics functions. Similarly, the line operates as a boundary, signaling delimitations for housing, food, and other basic needs, much like the idiom of drawing lines. The line also operates as a residual data hub for people and families who fall below it, meaning those who earn $1 or $1 under the threshold are tallied and accounted for in the same way—a data practice that functions much like a baseline. It is the last point that we delve into to present the concept of living below the policy line. In the context of our paper, living below the policy line refers to living and laboring practices that occur within, despite, and/or irrespective of policies that govern Black, rural students, places, and communities.

The metaphorical policy line across college access landscapes stretches throughout K-12 and postsecondary policy-based discourses. Throughout this paper, we consider college access to include participating in pre-college transition programs (e.g., dual enrollment, summer bridge, etc.) and meeting milestones that signal college-going (e.g., submitting college admissions, scholarship, and other financial aid applications). At the federal level, national non-profit organizations advocate for political reform on topics such as the Pell grant. In its 2026 federal policy agenda, The Institute for College Access and Success (TICAS)—a think tank—argued for Pell grant expansion and noted that “74 percent of Pell recipients come from families with annual incomes at or below $40,000” [and] “34 percent of Pell recipients come from families with annual incomes at or below $15,000” (The Institute for College and Success, 2026, p. 1). Similarly, the United Negro College Fund (UNCF)—an advocacy and intermediary organization—has repeatedly called for Pell grants to at least double, noting decreases in purchasing power spanning multiple fiscal years. At the state level, one relevant topic concerns dual enrollment. Approximately 2.8 million students nationwide were dually enrolled in the 2023–2024 academic year (Fink, 2025). A recent Bellwether report centered on the role of state policy in improving access to dual enrollment by highlighting funding models that benefit K-12 schools and postsecondary institutions, data reporting requirements, and alignment with regional workforce needs (Kaput et al., 2025). Though federal and state policies and policy advocacy efforts continue to shape, challenge, and advance broad college access landscapes, they risk becoming diluted, devalued, and disproportionately implemented and enacted at K-12 district and school levels as students prepare to transition into postsecondary education.

Skerritt (2025) discussed the importance of differentiating between policy implementation and policy enactment, noting that the acumen necessary to actualize the latter often goes unnoticed and understudied. “Policy enactment is not a neutral process but rather understood as a sociomaterial ethico-political activity involving a mixture of ethical and political sensemaking (and sensegiving), and sociomaterial actors” (Hay, 2025, p. 185). Within context, students engage in sensemaking about college access as they interact with school employees, community organizations, family members, postsecondary institutions, media, and general information and data about college. Those same groups, networks, and outlets provide sensegiving to students to help contextualize the ease and possibilities of accessing college. Together, they function as sociomaterial actors shaping and being shaped by college access landscapes. For Black, rural students, this dynamic is especially important, as their sensemaking and sensegiving exchanges are deeply intertwined with race and place. In our study, the nexus of race and place rests on a Black geographic backdrop that attends to explicit calls from the field of rural education research to map educational policy and implementation and to collect stories about the educational debt owed to Black students (Howard & Baker, 2024). Hence, the purpose of this study is twofold: (1) to center policy enactment through the lens of Black, rural students’ experiences and perceptions of college access in Alabama, and (2) to specify the labor practices that Black, rural students engage in to access college. We conceptualize student labor as a way of understanding how students navigate gaps in policy enactment. The lines of inquiry guiding this study are: How do Black, rural students access postsecondary education in Alabama? How do Black, rural students perceive and experience college access policies? What role does policy enactment play in Black, rural students’ college access experiences? We aim to highlight how Black, rural students engage in living and laboring practices despite haphazard college access policy enactment.

1.1. Alabama’s College Access Policy Landscape

There have been several policies that changed the trajectory of college access for Alabama students who seek to attend college. In Spring 2021, the Alabama State Board of Education approved a resolution to require all seniors to complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). Once it became effective for the Class of 2022, data showed “increase[es] [in] FAFSA completion by 24.9% [which moved] Alabama from 34th to 9th in national completion rankings” (Burns & Weeden, 2024, p. 7). Research conducted in surrounding states, such as Louisiana, for example, shows that statewide FAFSA completion mandates significantly increased FAFSA filing rates among students and modestly increased college enrollment (Deneault, 2023). In Fall 2025, the state began implementing its Alabama Direct Admission Initiative, a partnership between dozens of 2-year and 4-year in-state institutions to streamline college application processes for all seniors. Alabama Possible, the foremost statewide nonprofit organization championing this effort, houses directions and links to the centralized application/account portal on its website. In an article published by Alabama Daily News in October 2025, the initiative had already earned 9000 Alabama seniors approximately $2.2 billion in scholarship offers (Crain, 2025). Education, political, and community-based advocates of both anticipate continued increases in college enrollment, particularly for students who have previously faced issues with financing postsecondary education and encountered systemic barriers to accessing college, more broadly. Alabama’s contemporary college access policies are swiftly changing and relatively new, considering both aforementioned policies range from approximately five years to five months old in implementation age. Because of the policies’ youth, researchers and educators know little about how such policies are enacted or how stakeholders perceive and experience enactment. This knowledge gap is important, as it hinders policy improvement efforts and does not explicate challenges and opportunities associated with diverse regional, school, and student contexts across rural places. Furthermore, despite recent policy changes across the state, Black, rural students continue to encounter barriers due to uneven or incomplete policy enactment.

1.2. Place and Rurality in Context

No singular definition of rurality fully captures the nuances, cadences, and expansiveness of the term or lived experiences of those who identify with it (see McNamee et al., 2025b). For the context of this study, we think about rurality alongside Chigbu (2013), who considers multiple factors like rural place, rural people, rural livelihoods, rural governance, and sociopsycho-rural perceptions. Those considerations serve as a backdrop for understanding place identity among rural students and communities. Peng et al. (2020) argued that there are challenges with understanding place identity, suggesting that it specifically falls within the “widely complained-about unclear relations between place identity and other environmental psychology concepts, such as place attachment, rootedness, sense of place, place dependence, and place satisfaction” (p. 2). Furthermore, Belanche et al. (2021) continued the discussion on the nuances of place, asserting “place identity is the self awareness of one’s membership to a place related community, involving the emotional and evaluative significance of this membership” (p. 242). In this regard, place does not necessarily have to be related to physical location, but rather more closely associated with identity and belonging. They went on to argue, “residents in rural settlements tend to have more frequent social interactions with their neighbors and a more direct relation with their friendship network, which increases familiarity and community involvement” (p. 244). Rurality, from this vantage, values connection, community, and context. It also mirrors rural education research and practice on the global level—specifically through the United National Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)—that centers place as a site of learning, organizing, empowerment, and cultural diversity (Beckman & Gallo, 2015; Öztemur et al., 2024).

1.3. An Overview of Black, Rural Students’ College Access

The Postsecondary National Policy Institute (2023) found that approximately 10.7 percent of rural students enrolled in postsecondary institutions are Black, compared to approximately 67.6 percent who are white and 11.5 percent who are Latino/a/x. Despite percentage gaps, some demographic differences are due to geographic and data incongruity about what and who count as rural (Grant & Kniess, 2023; Williams, 2025). When studying the geographies of opportunity, Wells et al. (2023) found that rural high school graduates enrolled in college less often than nonrural high school graduates, rural high school graduates enrolled in four-year institutions at lower rates than nonrural students, rural students have higher average GPAs than nonrural students, and Black students had a higher probability of enrolling in a four year college, but white and Latino/a/x students had a lower probability compared to the overall average. Their work highlights the complexity of rural identities navigating K-12, higher education, and the transition between them. Furthermore, Roberts and Grant (2021) utilized a college and career readiness and social cognitive career theory framework to argue that rural students fall short in college and career readiness due to the issue of educational equity for students of color, students of lower socioeconomic status, and students with disabilities. They found that teachers and school counselors were both critical to the success of rural students (Roberts & Grant, 2021). Similarly, Tieken (2016) also highlighted the role of school-based educators in their findings, noting that the advising strategies and messages that rural teachers and counselors provided to students were centered on securing relatively quick job security.

1.4. Black, Rural Students’ Supports and Challenges to Accessing College

Several supports aid in Black, rural students’ access to (and later success in) college. One common support is close relational ties between students and friends, peers, educators, and community members (Flowers, 2024). Such ties are often maintained through Black, rural high school alumni who return to their schools and communities to teach, mentor, and serve (Williams et al., 2023) and through community-based entities like the Black church that equip students with various forms of capital to succeed in college environments (McCray et al., 2012). Despite those supports and supporters, barriers still exist. Many Black, rural students have multiple intersecting identities, some of which further complicate and exacerbate their access to college. For example, some Black, rural students share the identity of being first-generation college students and low-income (Sims & Ferrare, 2021; McNamee et al., 2025a). Such identities amplify barriers, making it more difficult to find accurate information about college, finance college, and meet major-specific criteria beyond basic admissions and financial aid criteria. Whiteside (2021) found that first-generation students had limited access to college preparatory classes, standardized college entrance exams, and funding opportunities. Limited access at the K-12 level remained a pressing and pervasive issue at the postsecondary level. Means et al. (2019) highlighted how Black, rural students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds continued to be underrepresented in higher education. They also cautioned against burdening underserved youth to tackle system inequities alone, urging adults, educators, and policymakers to offer strategic guidance and insight (Means et al., 2019). Hence, the onus of labor to support Black, rural students should be a shared, collective effort among multiple individual, institutional, and organizational actors. While prior research has documented barriers to college access, less attention has been paid to how students actively navigate policy contexts, which we conceptualize as labor through this study.

2. Materials and Methods

This study presents insights from a multi-site comparative case study of Black, rural students’ and alumni’s experiences accessing and navigating postsecondary education in Alabama. We chose a multi-site comparative case study (CCS) design because it is “well-suited to social research about practice and policy” (Bartlett & Vavrus, 2017, p. 1) and allowed us the methodological flexibility to grapple with variations across rural contexts. CCS also makes space to explore contemporary and past phenomena that undergird context, which is why we included insights from students and alumni. Both groups shared the prior experience of perceiving and navigating college access landscapes. Each of the five cases corresponded with each of the five institutions included in the study: Crater State University (CSU), Light Community College (LCC), Branch University (BU), the University of Pine (UP), and Moon State Community College (MSCC) [pseudonyms]. These institutions represent a range of 2- and 4-year institutions, public and private institutions, Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), predominantly white institutions (PWIs), rural-serving institutions, and land-grant institutions across the state. We found it important to include a range of institutional types because they each have their own set of policies, practices, and commitments for supporting college access.

2.1. Data Collection

Virtual focus groups served as the data collection method for this study. Conducting virtual focus groups helped our research team to promote access to participants and their knowledge, as it minimized constraints associated with time and space (Moore et al., 2015). During the 2024–2025 academic year, members of our research team conducted a large study—encompassing 16 virtual focus groups with a total of 99 participants across all five institutions—that broadly sought to understand racialized college access experiences in the U.S. South. This substudy deepened our inquiry into the larger study by focusing on issues related to college access policies. The specificity of college access policies narrowed our substudy sample to 14 participants. Each participant is the substudy sample explicitly or implicitly referenced a college access policy (e.g., dual enrollment, FAFSA, application requirements, etc.) that they navigated in their transitions and plights toward postsecondary education. The substudy sample also includes focus group transcript excerpts that met the following criteria: (a) were attributed codes labeled as work or labor (b) were attributed codes labeled as counselor perceptions or school perceptions, (c) were attributed codes labeled as non-familial access supports, or (d) were attributed codes labeled as rural supports, rural sensibilities, and rural barriers. We chose these coding parameters to align with our research questions: How do Black, rural students access postsecondary education in Alabama? How do Black, rural students perceive and experience college access policies? What role does policy enactment play in Black, rural students’ college access experiences?

2.2. Data Analysis

We transcribed all focus group audio files and analyzed the transcripts using Dedoose software. We engaged in three rounds of coding, each round aligning with reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2021). We identified themes based on patterns across focus groups. Some of the reflexive prompts we consistently sought to grapple with throughout analysis were access supported by whom, access enabled by what, and access work type. To deepen our analysis, we also engaged with the conceptual framework of disconnection capitalism thesis, or DCT (Thompson, 2003, 2013). DCT falls under the realm of theories and concepts that seek to explain labor processes. Essentially, DCT describes the gap or tension between (a) employers’ decisions and impositions on employees and (b) employees’ values and visions (Thompson, 2003, 2013). The strain and misalignment between both parties can intensify work. Similarly, we noticed (and noted that the participants noticed) a gap between intended and actual college access resources expected from K-12 schools and higher education institutions, resulting in Black, rural students’ labor intensifying to contextualize, navigate, and overcome shortcomings in those resource landscapes. Though DCT traditionally operationalizes labor through conceptions of paid labor and formal employee and employer relationships, we adapt and extend it to include unpaid, often taken-for-granted labor that students exert. So, DCT helped us to rename and reframe Black, rural students’ strategies as laboring practices.

2.3. Trustworthiness

Research team members’ commitments to trustworthiness were evident throughout the data collection and analysis process. First, we maintained an electronic audit trail of procedures, analytic decisions and tensions. Before drafting our findings, one author conducted a formative audit (de Kleijn & Van Leeuwen, 2018) to provide feedback to the other authors about the development of themes and the planned manuscript. A core recommendation from the formative audit was to clarify the relationship between labor and strategy, which led to the research team engaging with DCT as an analytic framework. Second, all authors engaged in a reflexive journaling activity that required us to reflect on how our prior experiences with rurality inform our assumptions about Black, rural people and places and our methodological decisions. Third, we engaged in peer debriefing on a weekly basis, where we continuously revisited our reflexive journal responses, reviewed codes, and discussed emergent themes.

2.4. Positionality

We approached this work as Black critical scholars who work, collaborate, and learn from one another within the same Alabama HBCU context. Two authors grew up in Black, rural communities in Alabama located approximately 30 min apart from one another and have enacted research and practical agendas focused on the advancement of Black, rural-centered research. Though they did not meet until their paths crossed in academia, they attribute their upbringing to their current commitments to center and embody rurality and highlight systemic barriers for rural students. One author did not grow up in a rural community, but has spent the last two years directing programming based in a Black, rural community; co-led research projects focused on Black, rural students’ success; and cultivated research interests that uplift Black, rural students through doctoral education studies. In addition to academic appointments and affiliations, one author founded a consulting business that offers technical assistance to support rural- and HBCU-centered scholarship; and another author founded a non-profit organization and consulting business that provides direct programming, scholarships, wrap-around services, and technical assistance to rural students, local communities, and HBCUs. All three authors engaged with one another through mutual respect for each other’s rural expertise, academic collegiality, and friendship—themes that also reverberated throughout the findings of this study.

3. Results

Our analysis points to three findings: assessment labor, simulation labor, and capacity-building labor. Assessment labor refers to the labor that Black, rural students expend to understand the context of their K-12 schools, teachers, and staff, and overall college-going resources. Simulation labor refers to the time that Black, rural students devote to activities and events that model and imitate college experiences. Capacity-building labor refers to the strategies that Black, rural students rely on to strengthen their resource repositories as they seek college access and success. All three types of labor work in tandem to explicate Black, rural students’ overt and covert efforts to access and navigate college.

3.1. Assessment Labor

Black, rural students engaged in assessment labor to take stock of and reconcile with the resource landscapes available to them to access college. High schools proved to be a major site of assessment labor, as students were subsumed within discourses and practices related to college-going, such as standardized testing, college fairs, and scholarship and admissions applications. One manifestation of assessment labor shows up in how Black, rural students understand the pacing of college-centered supports. Marissa, a student at MSCC, said, “I feel like they only cared when we got in 12th grade, but they didn’t really put that on us when we were kids and early middle school years.” Marissa’s comment highlighted an important relationship between care, its communication, and time. Her critique of her high school was that it prioritized college—going too late—during students’ senior year. Such skewed attention inadvertently communicated that college-going topics were not a priority in earlier grade levels, were high-stakes to warrant increased pressure, and were time-sensitive pending graduation. Another manifestation of assessment labor shows up in how Black, rural students view values upheld through high school culture. Lyric, a UP student, said,

A lot of favoritism because I’ll be real, I went to a predominantly white high school. And at that school, it was almost like if you weren’t going to Auburn [University], if you weren’t going to [the University of] Alabama, if you weren’t going to an Ivy League school, they weren’t going to help you.

For context, both Auburn University and the University of Alabama are two of the largest institutions in the state of Alabama in terms of enrollment, and both are predominantly white, public institutions. Lyric noticed how her high school associated college choice with help. Like Marissa’s comment, Lyric’s comment also connected college-going support with care, but did so alongside size and notoriety, which is evident through the institutional examples she referenced. Essentially, Lyric’s predominantly white high school asserted that the only Black, rural students who mattered and were worthy enough of attention were those who had postsecondary plans that continued to place them in proximity to predominantly white institutions, and by extension, whiteness.

The inner workings of college access in high schools do not occur or proliferate without school actors, particularly guidance counselors; however, Black, rural students expressed that their experiences with counselors are not always positive, engaging, or beneficial. Jason, an LCC student, blatantly stated,

My counselor sucked! I didn’t have the best counselors in high school. We had assigned counselors based off of last name, and I talked to my counselor maybe twice. Even though I reached out to her through emails, didn’t get a response.

Jason assessed his counselor’s performance, the overall performance of all counselors in his high school, the effectiveness of the school’s model for assigning students to counselors, the meeting frequency between him and his counselor, and the modality used for communication between students and counselors. He used all his assessments to articulate his disdain and dissatisfaction with his counseling experience and to highlight the ineffectiveness and inconsistency in how counseling is implemented and enacted at the high school level. Similarly, Paris, an MSCC student, said, “I actually could have graduated while I was in high school with dual enrollment, but the counselor that we had, she had her picks and chooses on who she wanted to and [did] not want to.” Paris’s comment aligns with Lyric’s in that they both recognized the bias and favoritism—among the least of the isms—undergirding schools’ and school actors’ college-helping behaviors. Her comment also reinforces Jason’s points about counselors serving as inhibitors to college access. Lyric’s assessment centered more keenly on the repercussions of poor counseling, as her counselor prevented her from reaping the full benefits of dual enrollment. Despite the general consensus that high schools have room to improve when it comes to supporting college access, Black, rural students still acknowledge that college is a viable and reputable pathway to success and remains a highly touted credential. Lisa, a student at UP, reflected on her community’s perceptions of attending and graduating from college, saying “[College is] not a requirement, but almost like you’re expected to go to college, in a way. In a way, it was almost very competitive. If you didn’t go to college, you’re almost shunned from—at least where I was from.” Lisa assessed the extent to which college attendance prevented and protected Black, rural students from shame and ostracization. From her vantage, college provided a space to garner cultural capital and legitimacy from community members, which could be translated into communal pride, acceptance, and approval.

Assessment labor reflected inconsistencies in how college access policies were communicated at the K-12 school level. The communication breakdown is one directly related to the role of articulation. “Articulation may occur through program alignment with postsecondary programs, early college enrollment, or dual enrollment programs” (Alabama State Department of Education, 2021, p. 7). Participants’ experiences highlighted how, if at all, school actors articulated [to students] school, school-university, and statewide articulation efforts. Essentially, school actors held and exercised the power to enact policies at their discretion, which in turn, streamlined or hampered students’ access to college.

This finding points to several policy-based considerations. First, a deprioritization of college access support prior to students’ high school senior year can be attributed to the need for statewide policy changes related to the high school diploma type. Effective beginning in the 2023–2024 academic year, Alabama implemented new graduation requirements for public high school students, mandating them to meet at least one college or career readiness indicator. Indicators include a range of options like meeting benchmark scores on standardized exams, earning college credit while in high school, and completing in-school youth apprenticeship programs. Second, a deprioritization of non-4-year public or private institutions reflects a devaluing of credentials of value and career/technical education (CTE) that are a priority at community/technical colleges. As part of Alabama’s revised graduate requirements, the state offers students a workforce pathway option that centers CTE courses. Third, misinformed and misaligned college and career advising from guidance counselors suggests a deprioritization of professional development aimed at supporting their advising techniques and a lack of formal policy guidance for introducing students to staple college access programs like dual enrollment. Through Black, rural students’ assessment labor, we get a glimpse of the breakdown of policy at the enactment level and see how the remnants of policies negatively impacted their college access perceptions and experiences.

3.2. Simulation Labor

Simulation labor actualized through pre-college, college preparation, and postsecondary educational exposure activities. These exposure activities provided opportunities for Black, rural students to practice various experiences and phenomena that aid in college-going. Some of the most common iterations of simulation labor occurred during typical school hours and were embedded into schools’ curricula, graduation requirements, and/or college-going cultures. For example, Avonia, an LCC student, stated,

During my senior year, we did a lot with school, a lot with colleges. We did a lot with ACT prep. It was every other day we were doing applications. They would come get us out of class and we’ll go talk to recruiters. I liked it. We had the opportunities. We had the layout. If we wanted to, we just had to talk to them, and we could do it.

Avonia praised the college-going culture at her high school. The school partnered with colleges and universities to host recruiters and provided opportunities for students to practice standardized tests and complete college applications during the regular school day. Avonia associated her simulation labor with preparedness and postsecondary opportunity. Because of it, she also felt a sense of agency and personal responsibility to make the most out of the opportunities, noting that the layout for college access and success had already been created, and she and her classmates only had to follow it. Another student, Christina, a CSU student, discussed how she learned about a specific institutional type, saying, “I didn’t know much about HBCUs. I knew Alabama State [University] and that’s it until I did the Common Black College Application. I didn’t realize how many HBCUs there were. I didn’t know there were private HBCUs.” Here, the simulation labor manifests through the efforts expended to complete the application, to understand the purpose of the application portal, and to translate learning to make a more informed decision about college choice within a diverse institutional type.

Simulation labor also occurred outside of formal K-12 contexts while students were engaging in community-based pre-college programming. Community-based organizations were not only committed to Black, rural students’ academic success but were invested in their social and emotional well-being as well. Nic, an LCC student, stated,

It was scary for me. I’ve always been at home. I never really left for real. I don’t travel for real. I’ve just been at home. So, it was very scary… School-wise, though, I think [pre-college programming] was very beneficial when I was with [name of pre-college program founder] that he helped us prepare to separate from our parents and things like that.

Nic noted how his rural identity and upbringing socialized fear and anxiety toward college-going. Specifically, he had reservations about leaving his hometown and separating from family. As a support mechanism, he leaned on the founder of a local pre-college program to help him anticipate and navigate the socio-emotional toll that distance might create. Simulation labor, in this context, provided space for Nic to imagine a college lifestyle away from home, explore feelings associated with the transition into college, and plan for potential challenges that might arise.

Furthermore, Black, rural students continued to engage in simulation labor through postsecondary endeavors. Jeff, an MSCC student, stated, “I’m in the welding field, I’m in the technical field, and they kind of gave us, how can I say, real life instances and things like that [and] put us in certain situations that will happen in a workplace.” Jeff’s comment underscored the role of exposure activities in preparing students for careers. Real-life and real-world practice and practical experiences were not just valued in training and development; rather, they operated as context clues for understanding workplace culture, dynamics, and policies. The effects of not engaging in simulation labor have the potential to be deleterious, as one CSU student, Zeniya mentioned,

In my high school, we didn’t get much experience with exploring different careers as well. I’ve changed my major a total of three times so far, and I’ve only been here for two years. I feel like if we had gotten that experience—maybe more field trips, maybe people coming to talk to us more and whatnot—then more students would know or be confident in what they want to do, and find their passion, and what they want to do after they graduate college, or whatever they want to major in college. So, that was a huge barrier.

Zeniya desired early exposure opportunities and activities; so much so that she realized the consequences of not having access to them in high school. She experienced insecurity in her major, leading to multiple major changes in a two-year span. Such phenomena can extend the time to graduation, which, in turn, can be more financially taxing to students and families.

Simulation labor reflected how students compensated for limited opportunities created by policy constraints. Such policy constraints were directly related to the extent to which school-university and community-university partnerships supplemented students’ traditional school day experiences. Some of the students’ richest college access experiences were simulated by school leaders who valued a college-going culture and community leaders who filled the need gaps. Simulation activities took place during extended day environments, as an amendment to traditional school day schedules, and on weekends. The relationship between simulation labor and policy is one bounded by time—time to practice, time to explore, and time to develop comfort and familiarity with college access topics, norms, and procedures. Participants’ simulation experiences required time away from class, time getting acclimated to tools and software, and time to imagine their future college-educated and/or employed selves. When considering policy, explicit time towards college access activities during regular hours of instruction may prove challenging. The 2025–2026 attendance manual for the Alabama State Department of Education states that, “the scholastic day shall not be less than six hours of actual teaching, exclusive of all recesses or intermission periods unless otherwise ordered by the county or city board of education” (p. 10). What constitutes as actual teaching is ambiguous, but likely refers to general and elective coursework requirements to graduate. Through Black, rural students’ simulation labor, we see the benefits of time and activities reserved to support college access, and also negotiations and contentions between time and timing as it relates to when such labor takes place (and, in turn, what gets sacrificed).

3.3. Capacity-Building Labor

Capacity-building labor highlighted the ways that Black, rural students embraced and strategically applied sentiments of resourcefulness to support and sustain college-going. In part, their strategies could be seen as ingenious, skillful, and deliberate; yet they underscored how Black, rural students traversed systemic barriers and leveraged community and context to survive. Yazmine, a student at CSU, best captured this in her comment, saying,

When it came to applying for these universities or attempting to go on trips that you had to pay for, I would have to wait until a free application week or something of that sort and things like that. Just having to use my resources all around as far as content and people and seeing what type of vouchers they have and stuff like that.

Yazmine’s experiences suggested that she navigated financial hardship methodically. By capitalizing on resources like free application weeks and vouchers, for example, she was able to minimize her spending and maximize her time devoted to accessing college. To achieve that level of skill, she relied heavily on information and people who were in close proximity to her and her network.

Black, rural students also engaged in capacity-building labor to fill transportation gaps. When asked about challenges that he encountered, Juwan, a BU student, said, “I’ll probably say transportation because, as of right now, I don’t got my car on me. So, I’m just trying to work on social networking and trying to bond with my teammates and ask them for rides.” Juwan’s strategy to build capacity centered on genuine connection and companionship. As a prerequisite for asking for help, he found it important to socialize and build meaningful relationships with teammates who had the means to support him. His line of reasoning insinuates that he does want to be viewed transactionally or as a burden, a stranger, or charity. Similarly, DJ a UP student stated, “the University of Montevallo is in the country, so stores like Walmart are at least 20 min away and that’s by cars. So, I would definitely have to drive, but my roommate does not mind taking me places.” Like Juwan, DJ had a network of support that included someone to meet his transportation needs. In his case, his roommate was a key supporter who drove him where he needed to go. Addressing transportation issues also had broader, more far-reaching implications. Savannah, a CSU student, said,

I would say also having parents that can’t afford to come get you from Montgomery, which is a 45 min ride from home. So having to figure things out, having to leverage and make friends with people that have vehicles to be able to get smaller things when it comes down to washing clothes here and having to pay for that.

Savannah’s comment starkly connects transportation issues with family income, driving expenses, and basic needs. The reality of not having family who could afford to travel 45 min underscored the gravity of Savannah’s financial well-being and relationship to rurality. It also served as the impetus that signaled that she must resolve her own issues. Like Juwan and DJ, she used friendship as a mechanism and bridge for meeting her transportation needs.

Black, rural students’ capacity-building labor clarifies some of the gaps and areas of improvement in policy. Yazmine, for example, reiterated the importance of free application weeks. As part of the Alabama College Application Campaign, participating colleges recognize a statewide application week where they waive application fees, but it typically only occurs once per academic year, which limits the window of opportunity students have to prepare and submit their materials. Furthermore, several participants discussed savvy ways they met their own transportation needs, suggesting an overall lack of sufficient and related support stemming from elsewhere. Slaughter and Njoku (2024) highlighted innovative ways that HBCUs meet Black, rural students’ transportation needs, like providing Uber gift cards, so policymakers can learn from such precedents. Overall, capacity-building labor reflected structural gaps in policy supports related to financial well-being. At the federal level, a key example connects to the devaluation of the Pell grant, which has not been regularly adjusted to the cost of living, which limits students’ and families’ abilities to meet basic needs like transportation. Capacity-building labor, though camouflaged as guile and financial acumen within the context, accentuated financial strain within policy landscapes.

4. Discussion

All three findings framed Black, rural students’ work to access and navigate college as laboring practices. Assessment labor called students to consider and reflect on the role of quality in their K-12 educational experiences. Centering students’ abilities to assess quality required an acute sensibility to their evaluative judgement. “Evaluative judgement is the capability to make decisions about the quality of work of self and others” (Tai et al., 2018, p. 471). Black, rural students used their evaluative judgement to understand the shortcomings and potential of high schools and their respective actors, particularly in facilitating college access.

Simulation labor focused on the practice- and preparation-oriented college access work that Black, rural students engaged in. This type of labor involved models, mockups, and modules designed to imitate college-going experiences, emotions, and scenarios. To engage in this type of labor, students relied on creative, imaginative skillsets and activities that pushed them to see futuristic iterations of themselves in college and careers. Simulation labor was rooted in ideas of play. In higher education, play functions to aid in improving physical and mental resilience, social intelligence, and cognitive flexibility and intellect (Koeners & Francis, 2020). In our study, we viewed simulation labor as a way for Black, rural students to foster social intelligence about various college contexts and rural relationship dynamics.

Capacity-building labor foregrounded the savviness that Black, rural students displayed to ensure their basic needs were met, especially concerned with financing college and seeking transportation to, from, and across campus communities. The foundation of Black, rural students’ capacity-building labor was friendship. Heron (2020) centered the role of friendship among students in higher education, noting discourses and methods that bring student voice to the forefront of student success conversations. Our work extends conceptions of student friendships by demonstrating how and why friendships develop to attend to need. Such relationships are not sought or fraught with superficial intentions; instead, they are strategically created and sustained through care, mutual understanding, and shared resources.

4.1. Implications for Reimagining College Access

This study points to specific implications for reimagining college access. First, K-12 schools need to embed specific, levelized college access discourses, activities, and checkpoints throughout the entire 13-year curriculum. By appropriately and more evenly spacing and pacing information and requirements related to college access, K-12 schools will be better poised to support students as they transition into college. Second, high schools need explicit college access counselors whose sole roles are to foster a positive college-going culture and attend to students’ and families’ questions about colleges.

4.2. Implications for Coalition-Building

Implications for coalition-building require participation from community-based organizations. Such organizations should strive to be simulators, essentially planning, organizing, and implementing programs and initiatives that prepare students to simultaneously leverage their rural identity while potentially detaching from their rural communities. Coalitions of organizations that center mental, spiritual, emotional, physical, and academic well-being should collaborate to create simulations that mimic college conversations, transitions, and experiences. These types of coalitions will help bear the brunt of simulation labor that Black, rural students already carry. Furthermore, the Alabama Direct Admissions Initiative is already showing promise as an educational consortium, an act of unity, uniformity, and early meso-level coalition-building; however, Auburn University and the University of Alabama do not currently participate, limiting students’ access to two of the largest public institutions in the state—one of which [Auburn University] is a land-grant institution with purported claims to promote access and outreach. Therefore, we urge those and other postsecondary institutions across the state to join forces in solidarity to streamline college access for all Alabama students.

4.3. Implications for Strategizing

Strategizing around existing resource landscapes is key to Black, rural students’ success. For many students, friendships operated as an accessible and practical gateway to expand their capacity to access and navigate college. This suggests a learning opportunity to explore ideas and practices of friendship, collegiality, and strategic relationship formations among Black, rural students in higher education. Relatedly, this study also calls for K-12 and community-based actors to consider how to teach strategy so that students will be socialized and equipped to cultivate the skill.

4.4. Recommendations for Research

We recommend that future research studies engage with CCS within a specific institutional type, explore specific rural contexts within and beyond Alabama, and take longitudinal approaches to understanding policy. CCS proved to be a highly contextual and effective way for our research team to think about place from multiple perspectives. Future research might target its inquiry within an institutional type like HBCUs, rural-serving institutions, or community colleges. Furthermore, CCS also lends itself to comparative intra-state (e.g., the Alabama Black Belt and the Appalachians) and/or interstate analysis (e.g., Alabama and Florida). Furthermore, longitudinal studies that track students’ experiences alongside policy shifts over multiple years will help contextualize the effects of policy on college access trajectories.

4.5. Recommendations for Practice

Our recommendations for practice center on improving the quality of professional development for guidance counselors and other professionals who provide college access support to Black, rural students. These educators are responsible for enacting policies, and they are often the most student-proximal resources. Professional development should address school, district, state, and national policy changes; historical and contemporary data trends related to college access; leading practices for holding student-centered, family-centered, and community-centered college access discussions and workshops; and the yearly labor involved in accessing college.

4.6. Recommendations for Policy

Our study points to several recommendations for policy. We present them as bulleted points to add clarity and call greater attention to them.

• Increase the number of statewide free application weeks per academic year to four—one per nine-weeks to align with common grading timelines.
• Establish a dual enrollment handbook that provides explicit eligibility, enrollment, and student support guidance.
• Expand the college and career indicators for graduation requirements to include participation in formal school- or community-based simulation programs, activities, and initiatives.
• Provide direct financial support or tax incentives for transportation to/from off-campus dual enrollment courses and instructional activities.
• Alter the scholastic teaching day by 25 min to provide a college access recess where students devote time toward realizing their college dreams.
• Embed college-centered simulation activities into formal general, elective, and CTE curricula, and ensure they are assessed in accordance with state standards.

5. Conclusions

We hope that our work pushes the field to interrogate student labor through the context of college access. The concept of student labor provides an opportunity to contend with the ethics, nature, and responsibility of compensation. We challenge school, district, state, and federal policymakers to consider how they might formalize reward structures for students and families so that they benefit from their labor. As we have demonstrated, Black, rural students’ laboring practices can be both beneficial and laborious; necessary and costly; intentional and inadvertent. The duality circumventing their rural and racial identities is much like the nature of their labor. Assessment labor, simulation labor, and capacity-building labor intermingle as a set of practices to help students understand the contexts and resources undergirding their college access journeys. When Black, rural students engage in these types of labor, they enact commitments to seeking college access.