'Bright future for greater Nebraska': Survey shows rural students want to stay in state (2025)

In William Paxton’s eyes, his hometown was the perfect place to grow up — and someday it will be the perfect place to call home again.

The small town of Stuart in northern Nebraska, where he was born and raised, has everything he could want in a community. It’s tight-knit, comfortable and flourishing.

He can see Stuart’s potential in the coffee shop that successfully opened a year ago near the highway that runs by town, proving small businesses can thrive there. The power of the community’s selfless demeanor can be seen at the local movie theater, too, which is completely run by volunteers in the town with just over 500 residents.

It’s a place where everyone knows everyone, and if anything were to happen, the community members have each other’s backs. He feels safe and protected there.

“My hometown has shaped me into the man I am today. It has taught me the difference between right and wrong. It's taught me what a good person is,” he said. “When I look around, I see community members that will help any new business and are the first to be there if someone's injured.”

“I just look at how many people are serving each other, and how it's all without anything in return. They continue to serve each other, and that's why I love my rural community,” he added.

Because of all of this, Stuart is where Paxton can envision himself living for the rest of his life.

And a recent statewide survey shows that Paxton, now a freshman at South Dakota State University, might not be the only student in rural Nebraska who feels this way about small towns.

Paxton was one of thousands of students across the state to complete the annual Nebraska Youth Survey, asking middle and high school students from rural communities their thoughts and perceptions of their small hometowns.

The survey, produced by the Nebraska Community Foundation and the Center for Public Affairs Research at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, was given to more than 4,000 students at 43 different rural schools over the past five years to identify how to attract and retain young people in the state.

Students were asked a variety of questions such as what their ideal size of community is, how likely they are to live in rural Nebraska later in life and what characteristics they look for in a community.

Consistently, more than half of the students surveyed each year said they are somewhat or extremely likely to live in the area they currently live in when they are adults. Additionally, a majority of students said their ideal community size is small like their hometowns. Students also reported not feeling a negative stigma around returning to or staying in their small towns after high school.

The survey also showed that many students listed safety, good schools and close proximity to family as priorities when choosing a place to call home — all of which they say they can find in their hometowns, said Carrie Malek-Madani, the director of marketing and communications for the Nebraska Community Foundation.

“This is really good news,” she said. “I think this survey really points to a bright future for greater Nebraska.”

However, while most students over the course of the survey said they feel connected to their communities, an overwhelming number of participants reported they don’t feel like they play an actual role in the community, which presents a big problem for rural towns, said Josie Schafer, the director of the Center for Public Affairs Research.

Despite many students having jobs in high school, Schafer said the opportunities for internships or job shadowing, which could be more meaningful to students, may be lacking in some small towns.

By creating more opportunities to expose students to the variety of careers available in rural areas, Schafer said it could lead to students truly feeling like important members of the community. Simply showing students that they’re wanted in rural Nebraska could make a huge difference in the retention of young residents, she added.

“That's that distinction that really makes them go, ‘Oh, I didn't just have a good experience there. I had a great experience there, and I'm needed there. I made a difference in that community. I want to keep making a difference in that community,’” she said.

For Paxton, who took the survey all four years of high school, his answers changed over time, he said. When he first answered the questions as a freshman, he didn’t fully grasp the importance of what he was being asked. But, as an upperclassman, Paxton said the survey helped open his eyes to how much his hometown meant to him, and that he could envision a future in Stuart.

This conversation even led him to write a speech for the national FFA competition this month titled “Rural America: The American Dream,” which is about the importance of rural communities and what life in a small town really looks like.

Once he graduates from SDSU, where he’s majoring in agricultural business and entrepreneurial studies, Paxton hopes to return to Stuart someday to open his own business and give back to the community he was raised in.

“Through high school, I just realized the importance of my own rural community, and it’s something I've become passionate about,” he said.

When the first round of surveys was sent out in 2020, Malek-Madani expected the results to show more students with plans to leave their hometowns forever, or for students to care less about safety and schools, and more about entertainment. Without listening to students’ voices, like Paxton’s, they may never have known how young people in the state actually felt about rural Nebraska.

Now, it’s important to continue listening, she said.

“Young Nebraskans are just extraordinary, and we should be doing everything in our power to either keep them here or give them reasons to move back,” she said.

Schafer and Malek-Madani plan to continue the conversation around what students in small towns want for their futures, and find ways to use the data to help communities build their population of young residents. They don’t have any plans for the survey to end anytime soon.

“I don't anticipate a day when we will cease to care about what young Nebraskans think about their communities,” Malek-Madani said. “It's going to continue to be an integral part of the work that we're doing.”