602 EXPERIMENT STATION RECORD. 



years that the agricultural courses have come to be considered pro- 

 fessional courses in any sense of the word, that is, specialized to meet 

 the needs or the tastes of different individuals, the showing is cer- 

 tainly a creditable one. 



If, however, we consider only the more recent graduates of the 

 Michigan Agricultural College we shall find a much greater per- 

 centage following agricultural pursuits. Of the classes graduating 

 from 1901 to 1905, inclusive, seventy-two per cent are engaged in 

 agricultural pursuits, and twenty-eight per cent in other lines, and 

 of those graduating from 1906 to 1910, inclusive, eighty-six per cent 

 are engaged in agriculture, against fourteen per cent in other work. 

 Taking the average for the whole ten years from 1901 to 1910, we 

 find seventy-nine and a half per cent of the graduates engaged in 

 agriculture. There are also more who are actually farming — ^thirty- 

 two per cent in the last ten years, as compared with twerty-seven 

 per cent for the whole fifty years. 



Figures are not available from all of the land-grant institutions 

 to show the present occupations of their graduates, but we have data 

 concerning the later graduates from a number of institutions. 

 According to a recent compilation as to the pursuits followed by the 

 alumni of the Illinois College of Agriculture during the past ten 

 years, one hundred and fifteen of the total one hundred and eighty- 

 four graduates are engaged in farming, forty are connected with the 

 agricultural colleges and experiment stations, seven are with the 

 L'nited States Department of Agriculture, and another is an agri- 

 cultural editor, making about ninety per cent connected with the 

 agricultural industry. 



In 1910 there were thirty-eight graduates of the animal husbandry 

 course at the Iowa State College. Of these, thirty engaged in farm- 

 ing, four became teachers in ngricultural colleges, and one went into 

 agricultural journalism. Only three of these graduates were looking 

 for positions at commencement time, and these three wanted to 

 become farm managers. It is stated that out of one hundred and 

 eighty-nine recent graduates of the same institution who are engaged 

 in agricultural pursuits, one hundred and thirty-two are farmers. 



As another example, it is stated that of the recent graduates in 

 agriculture at the North Dakota Agricultural College, forty-six and 

 two-thirds per cent are engaged in experiment station work, sixteen 

 and two-thirds per cent in farming, thirteen and one-third per cent 

 in teaching agriculture in agricultural colleges, ten per cent in exten- 

 sion work, ten per cent in teaching agriculture in high schools, and 

 three and one-third per cent in editorial work on farm journals. It 

 is also reported that of the 1,582 young men who have taken the short 

 course in agriculture at that institution during the past five years, 

 over ninety per cent are employed in farm work. 



