Many students attending a Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) Rural Voice event at UW-River Falls said they would prefer to live in less-populated places as opposed to urban locations because of greater job availability.
For an urban-to-rural population shift to happen on a large scale, rural areas will have to increase capacity in sectors such as housing and broadband capacity and will need educated employees to grow the rural workforce, speakers at Tuesday’s event said. Universities such as UW-River Falls that are located in rural regions are poised to play a key role in building that workforce, they said.
The challenges facing rural communities are complex, and the hands-on learning opportunities that UW-River Falls offers students prepare them to address those issues, said Michael Orth, dean of the UWRF College of Agriculture, Food and Environmental Sciences.
“It used to be that you milked cows on the farm,” Orth said. “Now you milk the cows, but you also worry about the welfare of the animals. You worry about the environmental impact of your farm. You have to take all of that into account. Things are a lot more complex.”
Many jobs that educators traditionally have viewed as being in urban locations also are possible in rural ones, especially with economic shifts that are occurring since the pandemic, said Jennifer Wllis-Rivera, chair of the UWRF Communication and Media Studies Department.
“A lot of the jobs that we prepare our students for, you can find them in inner cities, but you can also find them in rural communities,” Willis-Rivera said. “We find ways to help students be able to contribute to their communities in ways that they haven’t thought of before.”
UWRF Chancellor Maria Gallo said the key to building the rural workforce is connecting students to the kinds of education they want.
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