Everyone deserves access to a quality education, even if they can’t afford one. But most of the time, students from low-income families don’t know that it’s possible for them to afford college. A recent Brookings Institute study found that many high-achieving, low-income high school students aren’t applying to more expensive, prestigious schools and are instead applying to local schools with cheaper tuition. Many of these students did not apply to these competitive schools because they did not know about the financial aid they could have received.

Though the University does have programs that help students with the cost of college, those low-income students from rural areas are less likely to know about them, according to the study.

In a Daily Illini article published on April 3, director of Undergraduate Admissions Stacey Kostell said University officials opt to visit larger high schools. 

But because of this tendency, students in rural areas receive the short end of the stick — they are not exposed to all of the opportunities available, whether it be schools they can apply to or available financial aid packages.

Students rarely choose where they attend high school: They are stuck wherever their parent or guardian is, big city or little town. Opting not to go to these rural towns and smaller schools presents a lot of missed opportunities for universities. By sheer luck, some of the best and brightest students can be looked over by top universities, including the University of Illinois. The best students may not consider the University because they are unaware of financing options, too. Even then, so little straightforward information regarding financial aid is available that even if a student sought out a top university like this one, they would never know that they could finance it.

Additionally, the Brookings study ironically found that it’s cheaper for low-income students to attend prestigious universities while it’s more expensive for them to attend more local schools. But lack of recruiting and lack of something as inexpensive as information will disadvantage rural or small-town students, even if they were successful in high school and would benefit from a school beyond their local university or community college.

Lackluster recruiting efforts are not unique to the University, but that doesn’t mean that this school should join the droves of those that overlook rural students. 

To keep up the diversity recruiting the University and Chancellor Phyllis Wise are so proud of, we need to look more at this diversity: Charleston vs. Chicago, Peru vs. Peoria, Wenona vs. Winnetka and every other nuance in between. 

It’s this kind of diversity that promotes a collection of varied opinions. It promotes a diversity of ideas, which is so much more important than diversity of race, class or gender. For students to bring those ideas here, the University has to give students more attention and more information about financial aid.

When high schools are not sought after by the University to an acceptable degree, they need to make it known. As a public land-grant institution in Illinois, the University has a duty to every one of the state’s high schools — and even those students who are homeschooled or receive their education in other nontraditional ways. 

Education is a right, not a privilege. Students from rural areas, big cities, neither or somewhere in between deserve to be sought after by the University.