Abstract
This paper looked at the attitude of students towards the study of agriculture in University of Benin.
The main purpose of the study is to assess students‟ attitude towards the study of agriculture in
university. Four specific purposes and four research questions guided the study. The study adopted
descriptive survey design. The population of the study was 506 which consist of students of
agriculture at the University of Benin, 105 students comprising 15students in each of the seven
departments offering agriculture related courses namely; Crop Science, Animal Science, Forestry &
Wildlife, Agriculture Economics and Extension, Fisheries, Soil Science as well as Agriculture
Education option of the Department of Vocational & Technical Education were sampled randomly.A
20 items structured questionnaire was used for data collection; this was validated by three experts two
in the Department of Vocational and Technical Education and one in Measurement and Evaluation at
University of Benin. Cronbach alpha was used in deciding the reliability of the instrument and this
yielded a coefficient of 0.68. The data collected was analysed using mean and standard deviation.
The findings revealed that students‟ attitude towards agriculture are not very encouraging, most
students see agriculture as not having good image in the society, they also agreed that agriculture is
not accorded same pride of place like Medicine, Law and Engineering among others. In conclusion,
the poor image of those involved in agriculture should be change and agriculture should be given its
pride of place through massive investment in the area by all stakeholders. It was therefore
recommended that graduates of agriculture should be encouraged by granting them soft loans to
practice; professionals should raise awareness on career opportunity in agriculture and
modern/mechanized equipment should be provided for study and practice of agriculture.
Keywords: Agriculture, Student‟s attitude, Food Security
Publication Date: 2018-06-09