20 AGRICULTURE AND HOME ECONOMICS IN UNITED STATES. 



The colleges are under control of boards of trustees, which as a rule are 

 the same as for the experiment stations connected with them. The chief 

 executive officer is a president, under whom is very often a dean in imme- 

 diate charge of the agricultural work. The number of professors and 

 assistant teachers of agriculture varies greatly, but the larger and more 

 wealthy institutions now have agricultural faculties of 20 or more 

 teachers. These- institutions are in general equipped with a number of 

 substantial buildings and large farms used for agricultural instruction, 

 herds of different kinds of animals, special scientific apparatus, farm 

 machinery, agricultural libraries, etc., in addition to the equipment used 

 for instruction in natural sciences, languages, mathematics, and other 

 subjects usually included in college courses 



There are at present 48 State institutions in which college instruction 

 is given to white students and 17 colleges for colored students in the 

 Southern States. Similar institutions are maintained in Porto Rico, 

 Hawaii, and the Philippines. 



The data available at this time indicate that about $10,000,000 was 

 used for agricultural instruction in the land-grant colleges in 1921. 



Under the head of agriculture, instruction is given in plant production 

 (including agronomy [field crops], horticulture, and forestry), animal 

 production, agricultural technology (e. g., dairying, sugar making), rural 

 engineering, rural economics, and sociology. There is also instruction 

 regarding plant and animal disease, injurious insects, and predatory 

 animals. In the agricultural courses special emphasis is laid on those 

 subjects most important to the agriculture of the region in which the 

 college is located. Thus dairy farming is emphasized in the Northeastern 

 States, cotton farming in some Southern States, the growing of wheat, 

 maize, and other cereals in the North-Central States, dry farming and 

 irrigation in the Western States, fruit growing in the Pacific Coast States 

 and Florida. 



Combined with the instruction in agriculture, courses are given in 

 natural sciences, mathematics, languages, history, political and social 

 science, etc., in order that the graduate in agriculture may have a liberal 

 as well as a practical education. 



The amount of time devoted to agricultural subjects during the regular 

 four-year course varies in different colleges, but averages about 40 per 

 cent. In some colleges emphasis is laid on the fundamental sciences 

 during the first two years, but the present tendency is to give a consider- 

 able amount of agricultural work in those years. There is much elective 

 work during the third and fourth years, in which the student is expected 

 to give special attention to some subject of particular interest to him and 

 to combine with this a group of studies to make a well-rounded course. 

 This group system of electives is now much more favored than a system 

 of free electives, which often results in too narrow specialization or too 

 superficial work on too many subjects. 



