Occupational Aspiration of Undergraduate Agricultural Students of Kerala Agricultural University- A Multidimensional Analysis

Abstract

The study titled ‘Occupational aspiration of undergraduate agricultural students of Kerala Agricultural University- A multidimensional analysis’ was undertaken during 2017 - 19. The objectives of the study was to study and compare the occupational aspirations of the male and female undergraduate students of agriculture and also to categorise and compare the male and female undergraduate agricultural students based on the level of occupational aspiration. The study analyses both idealistic and realistic occupational aspirations of the undergraduate agricultural students by considering the concept of long and short range for goal period expression. The study also categorises the students based on their level of occupational aspiration by following the procedure adopted by National Opinion Research Centre (NORC) and Ajit [1] in developing level of aspiration scale. The occupational prestige rating scale establishes level of occupational prestige as viewed in India as well as determines the weighted score for each of the occupation. The sample of the study comprised of 120 third year and final year students i.e., 60 students from College of Agriculture (COA), Vellayani, 35 students from College of Horticulture (COH), Vellanikkara and 25 students from College of Agriculture (COAP), Padannakkad were selected based on proportionate random sampling method. 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. It was also observed that irrespective of the gender and college of study, the students’ level of occupational aspirations remained same.