Journal of Information Technology Impact

The rural South is poorer and less well educated than the United States taken as a whole and in comparison to other rural American areas. Historically, efforts to overcome this problem have focused on economic development by attracting industries looking for cheap labor, land, and taxes. This has resulted in a rural South that relies on low-wage, high-labor industries to provide employmentindustries that are logical candidates for relocation to foreign labor markets. Another phenomenon that contributes to failing rural development efforts is the “brain drain” problem, the trend of well-educated young people leaving the rural South for urban areas. The educational deficits of those left behind in terms of literacy rates, high school graduation rates, etc. is shocking and for many indicators, twice the rate of the remainder of the rural United States. A possible solution for the provision of economic development opportunities for rural Southern communities lies in the power of information te chnologies. This paper examines the dilemma of workforce depletion in geographically remote areas and describes the capabilities of networked business and training environments to address the challenge of rural community development in the Information Age.