PERCEPTION OF AGRICULTURE STUDENTS TOWARDS TAKING AGRICULTURE AS A CAREER

ABSTRACT

The study was carried out to assess the perception of agriculture students towards taking up agriculture as a career, using the University of Benin as a case study. The specific objectives were to describe the socioeconomic characteristics of the agriculture students, to identify respondents' awareness of career opportunities in agriculture, to ascertain respondents' perception of their level of willingness to take up agriculture as a career, to identify their career preferences in non agriculture areas and to examine their constraints in taking careers on agriculture. Data was collected using a well structured questionnaire. A two-stage sampling technique was adopted for this study. Data was analyzed using descriptive statistics such as frequency count, mean and percentages. The results show that the majority of the respondents are females (53.2%) with a mean age of 23 years (93.5%), and most of them residing in urban areas (71%). Findings also showed that majority of the respondents initially had interests in careers outside the fields of agriculture and 33.1% of them expressed some form of regret over having to study agriculture. Results also show that 63.7% of the respondents were persuaded to study agriculture as most of them (55.6%) failed to meet up with the admission requirements of their preferred courses, but 45.2% of the total respondents have the intent of majoring in agriculture as a career. The results showed that a large majority of the respondents affirmed their awareness of career opportunities in areas such as Agricultural Economics (74.2%), Production agriculture (70.2%) and Soil Biology (66.1%). Finding also show that majority of respondents have no interests in agriculture (= 3.55) opining that they would only take it up as a last resort ( = 3.55). Most of them also perceived agriculture in Nigeria as primitive ( = 3.66) and not something they would like to engage in on a full time basis ( = 3.26), as it is widely seen as being too risky to practice (3.28). Majority of the respondents establish their preference of non agriculture careers in the Medical Sciences (53.8%) and the Computer Sciences (41.1%).

The significant challenges and constraints faced by the respondents were lack of available resources, lack of funds and a high cost of inputs. It was therefore recommended that curriculum of Agriculture in the university be enhanced to better expose students to the broader areas of agriculture, while highlighting the importance of agriculture first as a career and as a way of life right from the kindergarten level of education. Resources should be made readily available by the Government and inputs easily affordable to improve active participation in Agriculture. Government should also put crediting facilities in place with low interest rates to encourage prospective farmers, as well as creating more job opportunities in the agricultural sector.