Training Agricultural Economic Majors for Business Careers

Abstract

ACOLLEGE course of study designed to train people for busiA JAness careers should have two primary objectives in mind. The first should be to prepare the student to get a job upon completion of his formal training. The second should be to provide the student with a background which will enable him to advance as rapidly as possible in the business or occupation of his choice. Every student should have something to sell when he asks for a job. Technical departments in colleges and universities have for years trained students in specialized fields so that they might enter a particular type of business or department of a business upon leaving school. While the market for such students has not always been assured, these students at least have had the advantage of having something to sell when the prospective employer asks can you do? Agricultural Economics courses, in the main, have prepared college students to enter several fields-farm organization and operation, business, and graduate study. Experience shows that this program has been very successful over the years. While the future market for graduates in farm management seems favorable, no one knows for how long departments may train and place graduate students to advantage at the present mass production rate. At least there is reason to believe that agricultural economics curricula should be broadened to provide specialized training which agricultural and related businesses can use to advantage. A fundamental question may be raised at this point. What can an agricultural economics department contribute in training a student for a position in the dairy industry, the poultry industry, or the feed industry that a commodity department cannot do as well or better? Why should a dairy concern, for example, look to an agricultural economics department instead of a dairy department for a man? It is interesting to note that a large number of the executives in present day agricultural businesses are men who were trained in technical and not economic subject matter. The