VCE students choose their subjects based on their career ambitions.

Canny students also make selections with an eye to their eventual ATAR, or university entrance score. Some subjects can attract more points than others. It's called scaling.

It is a complex formula which doesn't rate difficulty but averages and if you need a big score then you go after the subjects with the "free points" - those scaled up.

On last year's rankings, agriculture was right down the bottom alongside cooking and design.

Up the top, those with the potential for more points, are languages such as Latin or the traditional hard nut, specialist mathematics.

Those few students who have attempted those little-bonus agriculture and horticultural subjects have found them long and difficult.

They were not able to reconcile the complexity of the course with its scaling.

Authorities already have the Victorian Tertiary Admissions Centre in their sights over this disparity.

Agriculture is on the nose with Victorian students.

Only 7 per cent of the people working in the agricultural sector have a university qualification.

There is a chronic skills shortage throughout farming in Australia. Enrolments are falling through the floor and cash-strapped universities are said to be looking for excuses to drop the subject.

Industry needs to do more to promote agriculture as a career.

The media is complicit in promoting negative attitudes of farmers and the hit television series The Farmer Wants A Wife is an example of this.

One positive in this mess is overdue recognition by the Victorian Government that something urgent needs to be done.

A parliamentary inquiry is due to report on its fact-finding efforts within six months.

The end of the drought may mean more rural families can afford to send their children off to university.

But it is the parliamentary report and the Government's response that we need to provide a wholesale solution to an entrenched problem.