Willingness to Choose Agriculture as a Profession among Female Undergraduates in Selected Universities in Osun State, Nigeria
Abstract
The study was carried out in some selected Universities in Osun State, Nigeria, to assess the willingness of female undergraduate students of agriculture to choose agriculture as a profession. A two-stage sampling procedure was used to select 120 female undergraduate students of agricultural disciplines in the selected Universities for the study. Primary data were collected with the aid of well-structured questionnaire. Data were described with the use of percentage, weighted mean and standard deviation, while Chi-square analytical procedure was conducted to make inferences. The results revealed that the mean age of the respondents was approximately 23.0 years, most of the respondents (97.5%) were single and majority (75.0%) got their income from parents. Willingness to choose poultry production as a profession ranked 1st (2.80) and about 62.5% of the respondents were at medium level of willingness. Insufficient capital (3.48) ranked 1st among all the perceived challenges militating against the choice of agriculture as a profession. The result of Chi-square analysis shows that there was significant association between willingness and age and reason for choice of course of study. The study concluded that there was medium level of willingness to choose agriculture profession among the respondents. The study recommends that grants, incentives and farm machinery be made available by the government and other agencies for female agriculture graduates who are willing to choose agriculture as a profession.
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