Abstract:
Maintaining viable and consistent student numbers in Colleges of Agriculture over the past ten to fifteen years has become challenging in many states. Faculty and administrators associated with agricultural curriculums continue to face the demographic challenges in these enrollments. Slocombe (1986) noted a 25% decline in agricultural curriculums at land grant universities over a five-year period in the early 1980s. We must realize that the decreasing number of traditional age rural youth and the bleak economic climate for agriculture for much of the late 1970s and 1980s has and will continue to significantly affect enrollments in agricultural curriculums. The decreasing number of farms and rural youth has also impacted enrollments in secondary vocational agriculture programs and the traditional 4-H programs. One must then assume that these declining numbers of agricultural students would have a carry-over effect to post-secondary institutions strictly core agricultural curriculums. This statement is substantiated by Cole and Bok (1989) who discovered that the type of high school curriculum chosen by a student has little impact on the actual decision to go to college, but has a significant influence on their choice of major.
Keywords:
retention, agricultural mechanization
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