Career Aptitude Assessment of the Undergraduate Agricultural Students in Kerala Agricultural University

Abstract

The study entitled ‘Career aptitude assessment of the undergraduate agricultural students in Kerala Agricultural University’ was undertaken with 120 undergraduate agricultural students of the three colleges under Kerala Agricultural University (KAU) during 2018-19. Ex post facto research design was used for conducting the study and  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 revealed that majority of the undergraduate agricultural students had medium to high mechanical reasoning, language usage capability and numerical ability. 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. It was also observed that majority (95%) of the undergraduate agricultural students had medium to high career aptitude. These results indicated that undergraduate agriculture students have the desired skills to succeed in plethora of jobs i.e., from low profile jobs to high profile administrative and management jobs. Further, Man – Whitney test had been undertaken to test the significant difference between career aptitude of male and female students. The results revealed that regardless of their gender the career aptitude of the male and female students remained same. From this study it is evident that undergraduate students of KAU are suitable for wide range of occupations / vocations / careers from farming to agribusiness, from clerical job to the high profile administrative jobs, from farmer to the management professional, from private jobs to the government job, from extension agent to the agricultural scientist and so on.