I was visiting graduate schools with my daughter last week. She is graduating in May (yay!) with her BS and decided to pursue a further degree in her field of study. I am extremely proud of her and all her accomplishments. She is one smart cookie.

But … what is up with these college prices? As a parent, I am appalled and frustrated. As an academician, I get it! Colleges and universities are businesses. With less state funding available, the money for dorms, professors, equipment, labs, research, must come from somewhere. I just feel like the pendulum has swung too far to the business and not far enough to the whole reason for these land grant universities: agricultural education.

The Morrill Land Grant College Act of 1862 allowed each member of Congress to receive land to create a land grant university to educate in the areas of agriculture and mechanics. Many land grant universities were created and now are some of the best universities in the nation (Gig ’em). There was obviously a need back then, and this need and interest continues today. The problem is that we are turning students away because of cost; I don’t know that the average student can afford college without significant parental help or serious debt. The other problem is that we have created a business rather than an educational environment.

Do universities need an educational revamp? Or do we as employers need to reconsider what “educated” means regarding degrees versus life experiences? A BS degree doesn’t take you very far anymore. Also, universities receive more money (based on funding calculations) for MS and PhD students. These considerations create pressure to train more MS and PhD students which is creating an influx of highly trained students into the market. I am not sure this is a sustainable strategy.

A potential solution may be to expand our hiring options to include more trade schools and to life experiences for employment. Most CEOs who own their own companies have a BS or no college degree. I am not sure what that looks like in the poultry industry, but I am going to guess they have college degrees.

If we want to continue to hire people into our business, we cannot rely on six poultry schools to funnel students our way, nor can we continue to focus on higher degrees. Trade schools are a great place to capture these amazing students that cannot pay for a four-year degree or do not want to go into significant debt to pay for these degrees. There should be a similar pathway to earning potential for these students, and they should never be excluded because they do not have a BS degree behind their name.

The degree doesn’t matter as much as what happens in their brain. By that I mean the qualities we look for without the degree — including critical thinking and problem-solving, how they can organize thoughts and processes, how they can communicate verbally and in writing, and how they can work together in a team — is more important than the degree.

If we cannot focus on adding more poultry programs to land grant universities, then let’s focus on creating trade schools in agriculture with an emphasis in poultry. Most companies train on the day-to-day operations anyway. When you hire someone with good soft skills, the rest will be easy to train.

Just my random thoughts for a Friday!

Any one else frustrated?

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