Some Parts of Rural America Are Changing Fast. Can Higher Education Keep Up?

It’s barely 6 a.m., and Alexis Luna is spending her one day off at the Teton Valley balloon festival, babysitting her three nephews so her sister won’t have to pay for daycare. “I want to go up!” one of them shouts, scrambling over the bed of her black pickup truck. They are watching the hot air balloons rise from the parking lot of the Super 8 here, where Luna spends her weekends working the front desk. Most weekdays, she commutes an hour to work at the Target in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, taking the bus lately because her truck has started breaking down from the winding, mountainous drive across the Teton Pass.