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https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/...lfnotification#lf-content=211325331:731706643
Farming must shed tweedy image, says woman head of Royal Agricultural University
Maggie Ritchie | Jerome Starkey, Countryside Correspondent
September 2 2017, The Times
Joanna Price intends to attract clever, urban people to study agriculture ROYAL AGRICULTURAL UNIVERSITY
Farming needs to attract the brightest minds from beyond the landed gentry, according to the first female head of England’s oldest agricultural college.
Joanna Price, vice-chancellor of the Royal Agricultural University (RAU), in Cirencester, Gloucestershire, says that the industry is facing its greatest challenges since the end of World War Two.
She believes that encouraging farmers and estate managers from diverse backgrounds is the only way to navigate the uncertainties of Brexit.
“We have an image of being populated by men wearing tweed jackets with leather patches and yellow cords. Hopefully, having a face like mine at the university will change that,” she told The Times.
Professor Price, who grew up on a smallholding in Wales and started her career as a veterinary surgeon, said that she was driven to succeed when, as a child, a visiting vet told her “girls don’t become vets”.
The advice was misplaced, she said, because farmers were inherently practical people. “As a vet I found that as long as you do a professional job and save their livestock, farmers don’t care what you are.”
She took control of the RAU last year, when staff and students were demoralised by a trial of four male students accused of gang raping a fellow student at an annual college ball. The case collapsed last year, two years after the alleged assault.
Professor Price started her education at a comprehensive school before she won a scholarship to Atlantic College, an independent sixth-form college in the Vale of Glamorgan, south Wales.
She promised to widen the RAU’s appeal across the social spectrum and attract clever, urban people from a range of ethnic backgrounds to embrace careers in farming.
“It’s important that we have the best talent and the brightest minds to face the challenges we have in farming,” she said.
“Post-war, Britain was at the forefront of a farming revolution and we need to learn from that and go back to using applied research to find new solutions for what are, essentially, the same old problems.”
In 2014 the college, whose president is Prince Charles, came third from bottom of a table of more than 150 universities for the percentage of its entrants from state schools.
Figures from the Higher Education Statistics Agency showed that only 50.3 per cent of the university’s places went to state school pupils, even though they accounted for 93 per cent of school age children.
The professor is determined to overhaul the fusty and elitist reputation of the 172-year-old college, which became a university in 2012.
A spokesman said that the number of pupils from state schools was expected rise to 56 per cent this year and they hoped the figure would be 60 per cent at the next intake.
Farming must shed tweedy image, says woman head of Royal Agricultural University
Maggie Ritchie | Jerome Starkey, Countryside Correspondent
September 2 2017, The Times
Joanna Price intends to attract clever, urban people to study agriculture ROYAL AGRICULTURAL UNIVERSITY
Farming needs to attract the brightest minds from beyond the landed gentry, according to the first female head of England’s oldest agricultural college.
Joanna Price, vice-chancellor of the Royal Agricultural University (RAU), in Cirencester, Gloucestershire, says that the industry is facing its greatest challenges since the end of World War Two.
She believes that encouraging farmers and estate managers from diverse backgrounds is the only way to navigate the uncertainties of Brexit.
“We have an image of being populated by men wearing tweed jackets with leather patches and yellow cords. Hopefully, having a face like mine at the university will change that,” she told The Times.
Professor Price, who grew up on a smallholding in Wales and started her career as a veterinary surgeon, said that she was driven to succeed when, as a child, a visiting vet told her “girls don’t become vets”.
The advice was misplaced, she said, because farmers were inherently practical people. “As a vet I found that as long as you do a professional job and save their livestock, farmers don’t care what you are.”
She took control of the RAU last year, when staff and students were demoralised by a trial of four male students accused of gang raping a fellow student at an annual college ball. The case collapsed last year, two years after the alleged assault.
Professor Price started her education at a comprehensive school before she won a scholarship to Atlantic College, an independent sixth-form college in the Vale of Glamorgan, south Wales.
She promised to widen the RAU’s appeal across the social spectrum and attract clever, urban people from a range of ethnic backgrounds to embrace careers in farming.
“It’s important that we have the best talent and the brightest minds to face the challenges we have in farming,” she said.
“Post-war, Britain was at the forefront of a farming revolution and we need to learn from that and go back to using applied research to find new solutions for what are, essentially, the same old problems.”
In 2014 the college, whose president is Prince Charles, came third from bottom of a table of more than 150 universities for the percentage of its entrants from state schools.
Figures from the Higher Education Statistics Agency showed that only 50.3 per cent of the university’s places went to state school pupils, even though they accounted for 93 per cent of school age children.
The professor is determined to overhaul the fusty and elitist reputation of the 172-year-old college, which became a university in 2012.
A spokesman said that the number of pupils from state schools was expected rise to 56 per cent this year and they hoped the figure would be 60 per cent at the next intake.
... rich urban twits
