Career Diversity Spurs Ag School Enrollment : Education: The surge in sign-ups has been enhanced by agriculture’s improved reputation. Students’ environmental concerns also play a role.

Jennifer Scott grew up in the city. So she was not thrilled to learn that when she chose to study food science in college she would graduate with a degree in agriculture.

“I remember telling my mom how I was afraid I’d have to wear overalls and learn to drive a tractor,” she said.

Scott, from St. Louis, is a senior at the University of Missouri-Columbia. She is among an increasing number of people realizing the field of agriculture involves more than farming and ranching. The result has been growing undergraduate enrollments in agricultural colleges all across the nation.

“Actually, now I’m proud,” Scott said. “Agriculture is really a backbone. Anything that’s connected to humanity is connected to agriculture.” Her own studies, for example, concentrate on nutrition.

Dwayne Suter, an associate dean in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Texas A & M University, is the head of a U. S. Department of Agriculture project that compiles agricultural college enrollment figures.

He gives several reasons why enrollment has been rising after a decade of decline. Not only, he says, has agriculture’s reputation improved but the field now offers diverse career opportunities. Further, environmental concerns are attracting more interest.

Agricultural college enrollment peaked in 1977 at more than 98,000 students. It then took a downturn, bottomed out in 1987 at about 64,000, and began an upswing. In 1989, the latest survey, the count was nearly 67,000. Suter estimates that the 1990 figure will show an 8% increase and steady growth after that.

Looking back, Suter sees the 1977-87 enrollment slump as a result of an oversupply of ag students, a diminished interest in the environment and a campus reaction to a nationwide farm crisis.

It was a time when hundreds of farmers, particularly in the Midwest, watched their fields dry up in a protracted drought and their overextended credit dry up at the bank. Repossessions were commonplace.

“The assumption by many parents and high school students was that if you can’t make money in farming, don’t major in agriculture,” Suter said. It took a while to get over that idea, he said.

Suter points out that only about 10% of agricultural college graduates actually go into farming or ranching. The other 90%, he said, enter fields that today’s ag schools also prepare for--genetic engineering, forestry, economics, restaurant management--and the number of those types of jobs continues to swell.

In the late 1970s, Suter said, “Many people were not academically prepared to defend their positions. The young people now are coming in very determined they’re going to make a difference.”

He said the emphasis on the environment that attracted record numbers to ag schools in the 1960s to mid-1970s has resurfaced, and the study of land, water and air has its roots in agricultural colleges.

“Many of the parents of students coming into our colleges now were interested in ecology,” he said. Today’s students “have the same interest as their parents, but the young people are very pragmatic. The current generation is very interested in career relevance.

“It’s not simply a matter of money,” he said. “It’s more a matter of being able to have a satisfying and meaningful career, to be able to accomplish something in life.”

In addition to being committed to environmental issues, students now are studying various sciences, social sciences and humanities so they are well rounded and equipped to make a difference, Suter said.

Holly Whitlock, an Missouri University freshman from St. Louis, is an example. She said she decided to study agriculture journalism because it lets her concentrate on her specific interest.

“For me, agriculture journalism is a way for me to communicate how important the environment is,” Whitlock said.

The increased attention has prompted some agricultural schools, like the Missouri University College of Agriculture, to change their names. It is now the Missouri University College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources.

“We graduate farmers. We still serve that clientele. But that clientele is getting smaller and smaller,” said Jan Dauve, director of student affairs. “We’d be a little remiss if we didn’t let folks know we’re broader than that.”

The enrollment increases have some agriculture schools scrambling for money.

“Obviously, as you increase the numbers, you need to have the accompanying resources,” said David Mugler, an associate dean in the College of Agriculture at Kansas State University. “We’re anxious that our finances . . . catch up with our increased enrollment. It hasn’t always done it.”

But Suter said the enrollment turnaround was not totally unexpected.

“Farming and ranching is big business. Agribusiness will remain strong. The tools of technology, genetics, plant and animal breeding, are going to continue to have economic and industrial opportunities,” he said.

“In addition, we’ve been preaching environmental concerns from the beginning. Some of the best ecologists are farmers.”