Occupational aspiration of undergraduate agricultural students of Kerala agricultural university -a multidimensional analysis
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Date
2019
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Department of agricultural extension, College of Agriculture, Vellayani
Abstract
The study titled ‘Occupational aspiration of undergraduate agricultural students of Kerala Agricultural University- A Multidimensional analysis’ was undertaken during 2017 - 19. The focus of the study was to know the occupational aspirations of the male and female undergraduate students of agriculture, the factors affecting their occupational aspirations and study the motives behind joining graduation course in agriculture. The sample of the study comprised of 120 third year and final year students i.e., 60 students from COA, Vellayani, 35 students from COH, Vellanikkara and 25 students from COAP, Padannakkad were selected based on proportionate random sampling method.
The results of the study on profile characteristics of the students in KAU revealed that most of the students were between 19 to 22 years; all the three colleges were dominated by female students; majority of the students were first born children in their families and belonged to small families respectively; majority of the students had done their formal education in the rural areas, more than half of the students had low participation in extracurricular activities; father of 35.83 per cent of the students were in government service and mother of 47.5 per cent of the students were involved in family occupation ; 50 per cent of the students had parental annual income between 1 to 5 lakhs; almost 48.34 % of the students belonged to first class category in their scholastic achievement; majority (80 %) of the students had moderate to high reading habit; almost 50 % of the students had medium level of achievement motivation; most (49.17 %) of the students had B.Sc in agriculture as their second choice; 70 % of the students had medium level of agribusiness anxiety and 61.66 % of the students had favourable attitude towards agricultural education.
The results on occupational aspiration of the students revealed that more than half (56.65 %) of the undergraduate students in Agriculture belonged to the category of high level of occupational aspiration. Getting the state/ central government job (67.5 %) and entering into administrative sector jobs through PSC’s (48.3 %) were the realistic occupational aspirations of majority of the students. Becoming Agricultural scientist in central/ state government (45.85 %) and
cracking civil services (36.66 %) were the idealistic occupational aspirations of the majority of the students. Correlation analysis revealed that admission preference of the students was significantly related at 5 % level of significance, while parental annual income and achievement motivation were significantly related at 1 % level of significance and with the level of occupational aspirations of the students. It was also observed that irrespective of the gender and college of study, the students level of occupational aspirations remained same.
Career aptitude assessment of the undergraduate students of agriculture revealed that 64 per cent of the students had medium level of career aptitude. It was observed that majority of the undergraduate agricultural students had medium to high mechanical reasoning (95.84 %), language usage capability (91.66 %) and numerical ability (89.17 %). Almost 71.68 per cent of the undergraduate agricultural students had high verbal reasoning ability and majority (78 %) of the students had medium to low word knowledge. Scholastic achievement and reading habit of the students were in significant relationship at 5 % level of significance and achievement motivation of the students had negative and significant relationship at 1 % level of significance with the career aptitude of the respondents. It was also observed that there was no significant difference in the career aptitude of male and female undergraduate agricultural students, while career aptitude of the undergraduate agricultural students among different colleges differed significantly at 10 % level of significance.
The study revealed that the major motives of the students behind joining graduation course in agriculture were to get a white collar job in state or central government and to enter into civil services. However, the motives of the male and female students differed in some areas. While more female students had an inclination towards job as professor/ scientist in SAU’s than male students, in the case of entering into private companies as executives male students were more enthusiastic than female students. From the findings of this study it can be concluded that undergraduate students of Agriculture had high level of occupational aspiration and their career aptitude scores also showed that they are suitable for wide array of jobs i.e., from low to high profile jobs.
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