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President Joe Biden gently mocked Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) for touting $1.4 billion in federal funding his home state is set to receive for expanded broadband internet access despite voting against it in 2021. “See you at the groundbreaking,” President Biden wrote along with a retweet of Sen.

Colleges are seeing a surge in technology majors, but rural students are lagging behind on opportunities to take advantage of the growing, high-paying fields. From 2018 to 2022, Computer and Information Sciences and Support Services majors increased 23 percent, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, from 423,315 to 518,844. Rural students, however, face two pressing issues: the digital divide of internet reliability and technology access and education opportunities. The National Center for Education Statistics said that in 2019, around 76 percent of rural students

Typical of the bureaucratic nature of the federal government, rural broadband investments remain with traditional infrastructure, such as fiber-optic, cable modem, and DSL. While these technologies are important and economically viable in dense urban areas, we must recognize that new technologies are now available that will bring down costs and actually achieve the goal of total connectivity across the US.