“Maybe They Don’t Believe in Us”: Rural Latinx Students Reflect on Counseling and Recruitment Practices Structuring Four-Year Pathways

This study examines how rural Latinx students from California’s San Joaquin Valley make sense of and navigate access to four-year universities within a geographically and institutionally constrained college-going landscape. While prior research on Latinx college access has largely centered on urban contexts, this article highlights how race and rural place shape the availability and quality of information about four-year universities as experienced and interpreted by rural Latinx students. Guided by the nepantla stage of the college-conocimiento framework and using Chicana/Latina feminist pláticas as methodology, narratives from rural Latinx undergraduates who reflected on their high school advising and recruitment experiences were analyzed. Findings show that students perceived that counselors used labor expectations to position agricultural and low-wage work as presumed futures for students, even as they pursued four-year enrollment amid uneven institutional support. Students also reflected that four-year pathways were also less accessible through routinized counseling practices that standardized two-year enrollment and framed four-year options as less feasible. Students further described limited outreach from four-year institutions, which widened information gaps and placed the burden of navigating college on students and families. Implications emphasize the need for more equitable counseling practices and accessible outreach strategies that expand four-year information and support in rural regions.