Student preferences for agricultural economics degree names

NACTA Journal, Dec 2002 by McCluskey, Jill J, Loureiro, Maria L, Wandschneider, Philip

Abstract

As the number of students with farm backgrounds continues to decline, agricultural and applied economics programs must be able to attract students with different backgrounds to serve industry and students' needs. A concern is that degree names with the terms "agricultural" or "agribusiness" may distance many students with non-farm backgrounds. All undeclared undergraduate students at Washington State University (WSU) were surveyed in order to evaluate their potential interest in a proposed environmental and resource economics degree and their perceptions and preferences for degree names. In this survey, WSU undergraduates were asked a variety of questions related to their subject interests, background, and demographic information. They were confronted with different potential degree names for the same proposed curriculum in environmental/natural resource economics. As was hypothesized, results suggest that degree names that do not mention the term "agricultural," such as "Environmental and Resource Economics and Management" have broader appeal compared with degrees that include the term "agricultural." Somewhat surprisingly, names with or without agriculture have about the same appeal to students with agricultural science interests. We conclude that Departments of Agricultural Economics can expand their base of potential students by offering degrees with names that do not include the word "agricultural" in addition to their traditional degrees, and, probably, without jeopardizing these degrees.

Introduction

Academic degree names are more important than ever for marketing degree programs both within and outside of the academic arena. A popular degree name will make it easier to recruit students, as well as improve their job prospects. Thus, many agricultural and applied economics departments have changed their names by adding resource economics, agribusiness, or applied to their department titles (Blank, 1998). Although the name "Agricultural Economics" is still the title most widely used by departments listed in the American Agricultural Economics Association (AREA) directory, "Agricultural and Resource Economics" (the most popular name in the western states) and names containing the word "Agribusiness" are close runners up (AAEA, 2001).

As the number of students with farm backgrounds continues to decline and fewer students "go back to the farm," agricultural and applied economics programs must be able to attract students with different backgrounds to serve industry and students' needs. A concern with all of the above mentioned department names is that the terms "agricultural" or "agribusiness" may put-off many students with nonfarm backgrounds who might otherwise be interested in curricula that come under the traditional agricultural economics umbrella -- such as food distribution and safety or natural and environmental resources (Blank, 1998). We speculate that most agricultural and applied economics programs must for political reasons keep either "agricultural" or the related word "agribusiness" in their department names. A solution may be to keep the word "agricultural" in the department name and offer curricula with degree names that do not include any form of the word 66 agriculture." Degree names go on resumes, and in common use they become the answer to the question asked by friends, relatives and potential employers, "What is your major?" We argue that agricultural and applied economics departments can more successfully compete for non-traditional, urban students if they emphasize degree names that undergraduate students can identify with and we specifically hypothesized that students from non-traditional backgrounds would prefer names that exclude terms related to agriculture

While our conjectures may seem common sense, we could find no definitive empirical studies in the literature. As we have debated curriculum and planning issues in our department, we have heard arguments from some of our colleagues that names make little difference, while others opine that they can be an important factor. We speculate that these debates go on in other departments and that a careful empirical study could therefore prove useful.

The Department of Agricultural Economics at Washington State University (WSU) conducted a survey of all undeclared undergraduate students at WSU in order to find out their potential interest in a proposed environmental and resource economics degree and their perceptions and preferences for degree names. The Department currently has the classes and curricula to support interests in environmental and natural resource economics but attracts few students to these options. In this survey, the students were asked a variety of questions related to their subject interests, background, and demographic information. They were also confronted with different potential degree names for a curriculum in natural and environmental resource economics. The hypotheses that were tested in this analysis include that those undergraduate students who came from the Seattle metropolitan area would feel less positive about the degree title "Agricultural Economics (with an option in Environmental and Resource Economics)" than other potential degree names that emphasize the environmental aspects of the program. In addition, we conjectured that a number of students from non-traditional interest areas would feel less positive about a degree called "Agricultural Economics" than other degree titles. We specifically tested this hypotheses for students with business interests and students with environmental interests. We also conjectured that students with agricultural science interests would prefer an agricultural name.