Yesterday as I was browsing through my news feed on facebook- yes, facebook really gets worthy news articles out there fast- I came across an article that really ruffled my feathers.
An article written by a yahoo blogger, Terence Loose, listing the top 5 most useless college majors.
Would you know that three of those majors are all majors that come from the college or school of agriculture at a university?
Check out the article here, to see for yourself and those of you that follow my blog know that this easily could have ruffled my feathers.
Three majors they are discussing? Agriculture, Animal Science, and Horticulture. I easily know at least 10 people that work in each of these fields that I consider friends, that doesn’t even include acquaintances.
I mentally took a step back and smoothed down my feathers and really started to think about this article.
The article is mainly saying that students with these majors are having difficulty finding work.
But let’s be realistic. The students that majored in Agriculture could easily have returned to their family farms so they could continue to feed the world. The same could be said for a students that majored in Animal Science.
I have a degree in Agricultural Education. Which means that I can teach agriculture. Which means that I had to learn about agriculture. I would say that to describe my knowledge base I know a little information about many areas of agriculture, and because we are beef farmers, and that I grew up with horses and sheep, that my knowledge level has expanded within those areas. Do I use my degree in agriculture in the way it was intended. Every single day, but not in a classroom. I educate consumers through my blog, public speaking events, and even talking to the mom next to me in the grocery store.
As the number one most useless major being Agriculture, according to Terence Loose, I find it amazing that these students can not find jobs. As without agriculture how do we continue to eat?
Just my random thoughts for the day.
But, I am not the only one in the ag industry with random thoughts. Check out this page on Facebook where others who are involved in agriculture have posted their thoughts.
Take a look at this article from the Huffington Post. Excellent thoughts from a person that is not involved in the ag industry.
Great counterpoints and research! Maybe that original author did us all in ag a favor by rocking our boats. You don’t mess with Mother Nature or her Peeps! 😉
That was read at the Regional Beef Meeting at Johnson County last night and everyone got a chuckle out of it Couldn’t be farther from the truth
Who is this guy? Is he even qualified in any way to pick these majors? Because I’m just gonna throw something out there and say that sociology is probably way more useless than agriculture. I mean, I guess I understand that he thinks it’s useless because of the difficulty people are having finding jobs, but without agriculture, we wouldn’t have food on the table.
I went to UNL, and the agricultural college there was pretty big. We had tons of students who were doing agricultural economy, and it seemed like most of the people I knew who had that major got work pretty quickly. I guess living in the midwest, it’s easier, but this article just doesn’t really make sense to me, because I definitely didn’t see anyone get laid off in the agricultural sector.
Sorry for the long comment, hopefully it makes sense….