Assessing students' preparedness towards sustainability in US and European undergraduate agricultural curricula

Abstract

This work focused on the evaluation of undergraduate curricula in agriculture for a selected group of institutions from Louisiana and Texas in the US, and France and Italy. The primary research objective was pursued through the measurement of knowledge acquisition in sustainable agriculture principles of undergraduate students as they were approaching the completion of their curriculum. Quantitative data were collected through the administration of a test to eight samples (n = 20) of senior students from each university participating in the study. An analysis of frequencies for every test question indicated the strengths but also the weaknesses that still exist in the agricultural curricula when students' academic achievement was measured. Every institution acknowledged the emerging sustainable agriculture paradigm in brochures, catalogs and web sites. There is a need for ameliorating agricultural curricula as the long-term productivity of farms is threatened by market policies uncontrollable by single producers and by the manipulation of resources that frequently accelerate environmental degradation. Therefore, we show opportunities for the strengthening of study programs to incorporate sustainable agriculture principles in undergraduate curricula.