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Investigating Rural-Serving Institutions (RSI) Designations

ByBlake Decker

In our previous blog post, we introduced a new framework, Regional Public Universities (RPUs), that was used in the 2025 Carnegie Classification system’s Student Access and Earnings Classification (SAEC) designation. Developed by the Alliance for Research on Regional Colleges (ARRC), our initial presentation of RPUs provided a very small sample of the more than 125 data points used by ARRC in determining RPU status. From the myriad of IPEDS variables that ARRC incorporated into their cluster analysis, one of the intriguing variables was a new designation called Rural-Serving Institutions (RSI). In this blog post, we will take a look under the hood of how RSI status was determined and compare data elements between RSI and non-RSI universities in Texas. We will also look at a couple of interesting examples (West Texas A&M University and Texas A&M University) of RSI status in the “So What?” section at the end of this blog post.

Rural-serving institutions: Methodology

The real estate mantra of “Location! Location! Location!” has rarely been as essential to a higher education classification framework as it was in the creation of the RSI metric. As part of their research mission, ARRC developed the RSI methodology due to an “absence of an evidence-based definition of what it means to be a ‘rural-serving institution'” (ARRC). While a comprehensive review of their methodology is beyond the scope of this blog post, ARRC researchers combined a set of variables from publicly-available sources in developing an RSI index score for more than 2,500 institutions across the United States. Four of the five variables used were location-specific data points:

The fifth variable used in ARRC’s Principal Factor Method was the “percentage of an institution’s total degrees and certificates awarded that are awarded in rural-relevant fields” (ARRC Data Dictionary). The ARRC-RSI project team determined that three field-based categories (2-digit CIP codes) were considered rural-relevant fields for RSI status: Agricultural/Animal/Plant/Veterinary Science and Related Fields (01), Natural Resources and Conservation (03), and Parks, Recreation, Leisure, Fitness, and Kinesiology (31).

This methodology resulted in RSI index scores ranging from 0 to 4, with higher scores representing institutions that were considered more rural-serving than others. Out of the 2,525 institutions that received RSI scores, 43% of institutions (1,087) had an RSI score higher than the average value of 1.175, meaning they were designated as a Rural-Serving Institution. Out of those with an RSI designation, 505 institutions were deemed “High RSI” institutions with an RSI score of at least 2.14 (one standard deviation above the mean). In Texas, 53 institutions (2-year and 4-year, public and private) out of 138 (38%) were classified as RSI institutions, with 28 of those institutions receiving a “High RSI” designation. For 4-year public universities in Texas, there were 12 universities that garnered RSI designation (shown in the map below), with four universities (Sam Houston State University, Stephen F. Austin State University, Sul Ross State University, and Tarleton State University) being deemed “High RSI” institutions.

Notes: Hovering over each institution or adjacent county will provide additional information pertaining to metrics used in determining RSI status. On the RSI Status view, clicking on the “Not an RSI” checkbox will show all public 4-year institutions in Texas. To view a specific Texas university more closely, use the “Universities” map under the second tab above.

Rural-serving institutions in texas: Observations

The first map above (RSI Status) shows the 12 public 4-year universities in Texas that received an RSI designation. The shaded counties surrounding each institution are those counties where either the institution is located or are adjacent counties for the purpose of measuring rurality of the regions these institutions serve.

  • Including soon-to-be Texas A&M University-Victoria, 50% of these RSI-designated institutions reside within the A&M System.
  • For the 12 public university RSIs in Texas, the average percentage of the rural population in their home county was 31.7%, which was almost 4-times higher than the average of 8.8% of rural population in the home county for non-RSI universities.
  • More than 61% of the population in counties adjacent to a university’s home county was rural for RSI universities, while non-RSI public universities had 35.3% of the population in adjacent counties who lived in rural areas.
  • Given the nature of universities and the population density needed to support them, it is not surprising that most public universities in Texas are located in counties that are considered to be metro areas (see the definitions of a metro area below). While 100% of non-RSI universities are located in metro counties, 58% (7 out of 12) of RSI public universities in Texas are in metro counties.
  • For the counties surrounding universities’ home counties, 75% of all adjacent counties for RSI universities are nonmetro counties. For non-RSI universities, 46% of adjacent counties are defined as nonmetro counties.

Differences were also observed between RSI and non-RSI institutions on the university-specific measure used in the RSI methodology. At RSI public universities in Texas, approximately 9% of degrees awarded in an academic year were awarded to students in the rural-relevant fields. By comparison, 4% of degrees awarded at non-RSI universities in Texas were awarded in rural-relevant fields, as the national average for all public 4-year institutions in the RSI data was 4.2% of all degrees were awarded in rural-relevant fields.

So What?

As with almost any metric that uses publicly-available national data, there are often edge-cases that seem counterintuitive. Two such examples from the RSI analysis are non-RSI West Texas A&M University (WTAMU) and RSI-designated Texas A&M University (TAMU).

  • WTAMU, which is centrally located in the top-26 counties of the Texas Panhandle, would seem to be a certainty for the RSI designation, given that 16 of those 26 counties have 100% rurality. With that said, the RSI methodology is focused on home and adjacent counties of an institution. For WTAMU, there are almost 270,000 residents in Randall (home of WTAMU) and Potter (adjacent, includes Amarillo, TX) counties, both of which are considered metro counties and have less than 15% of their populations classified as rural. In the RSI data, WTAMU had 7 adjacent counties that had an average rural percentage of 53%. On the institutional measure of degrees awarded in rural-relevant fields, WTAMU awarded 10.5% of their degrees in rural-relevant fields, which was more than double the national average of 4.2% across all public 4-year institutions in the RSI data. The low percentage of rural population in WTAMU’s home county, as well as being adjacent to another metro county, seemed to carry more weight in the RSI analysis that resulted in WTAMU having an RSI score of 1.04, which was 0.135 points below the 1.175 cut-off for RSI status.
  • RSI-designated Texas A&M University is the opposite side of the counterintuitive coin, as it is collectively home to 77,000 students. more than 14,000 faculty and staff, and $1.2 billion in research and development funding. From a home county perspective, TAMU is located in Brazos County that had only 12% of its 233,000 residents considered rural. The inclusion of adjacent counties in the RSI model for Texas A&M appears to have had a positive influence in determining their RSI score of 1.46 (0.285 above the 1.175 cut-point for RSI status), as the six adjacent counties to Brazos County had an average rurality of 65%, with four of those counties having 100% of their population designated as rural. Texas A&M was also helped by the institutional metric, as TAMU awarded 13% of their degrees in the rural-relevant fields that were designated by the ARRC research team, more than triple the national average of 4.2% for 4-year public universities in the RSI data.

Are these two institutions’ RSI designations surprising? At face value…probably so. In our previous blog post about Regional Public Universities (RPUs), in which RSI status was one of 125-plus variables used in that broader analysis, WTAMU was identified as an RPU and Texas A&M was not. Those outcomes were not surprising. However, when you dig into the specifics of how the RSI scores were developed, we can at least understand how those RSI designations were determined.

These two examples highlight the need for scrutiny when reviewing new metrics and the underlying data associated with the creation of those metrics, which is what we will continue to do throughout this summer blog series as we look at other segments of data while exploring the challenges and opportunities facing Regional Public Universities.

Definitions

Metro-Nonmetro Status: Metro areas are defined as broad labor-market areas that include central counties with one or more urban areas with populations of 50,000 or more people. They also include outlying counties that are economically tied to the core counties as measured by labor-force commuting (USDA ERS RUCC).