Why is it difficult to keep college students from agriculture when tuition is free?

In order to attract and train agricultural talents, Zhejiang has funded the implementation of tuition-free policy for agriculture-related majors in colleges and universities every year since 2006. However, according to a recent survey by the Zhejiang Provincial Department of Agriculture, only 2485 of the 6943 graduates who enjoyed the policy "stayed in agriculture" between 2011 and 2013, accounting for less than 40 percent. Free tuition is difficult to attract college students from agriculture, in the face of brain drain, many teachers in agricultural and forestry colleges look and sigh.

The lack of elites has always been one of the biggest worries in the development of modern agriculture, and agricultural and forestry colleges and universities, as the cradle of professionals, have also suffered repeated student crises in recent years. The purpose of the tuition-free policy is to solve this dilemma, but these graduates do not seem to buy it. Researchers believe that this is mainly related to three major factors: the low employment attractiveness of agricultural enterprises, the slow replenishment of grass-roots agricultural technology extension personnel, and the gap between school specialty setting and employment demand matching.

The data show that 85 per cent of the 2485 graduates employed in agriculture-related fields choose to work in enterprises. Most of these jobs belong to the frontline of agricultural production, breeding and marketing, with poor working environment, low technical content, long working hours, low wages, imperfect management mechanism and lack of inherent attractiveness, even if graduates are employed in the agricultural field for the first time, job-hopping will also occur frequently after that.

Compared with enterprises, grass-roots agricultural technology extension institutions, as institutions, are still quite "attractive" to graduates because of the institutional guarantee. However, the survey found that these positions are generally openly recruited by county-level personnel departments, with slow replenishment, more emphasis on public majors in specialty setting, and requirements for a bachelor's degree or above, and the "high threshold" deters many graduates.

In addition, researchers also found that with the development of modern agriculture, Zhejiang has an increasing demand for graduates majoring in agricultural products processing, development and marketing, sightseeing agriculture, facility agriculture, circular agriculture, quality and safety of agricultural products, etc. However, the current situation in Zhejiang is that most of the majors are still concentrated in agricultural technology, horticulture, animal husbandry and veterinary medicine, flowers and fruits, tea and other cultivation and breeding specialties, and there is a gap between specialty setting and employment demand.

How to attract agronomy students from agriculture? The research group suggested that the relevant state departments should issue policies to encourage college students to engage in modern agricultural employment and entrepreneurship, especially for college students who work in underdeveloped areas, so as to make agriculture a "decent job." aiming at the construction of grass-roots agro-technical extension team, we can adopt such methods as single recruitment and examination, targeted training of grass-roots agrotechnical personnel, etc. In addition, it is also very important to reform the talent training mode of vocational education. Agriculture-related colleges and universities should take the initiative to connect with agricultural departments and enterprises, and set up majors reasonably according to the actual production. Jointly formulate training objectives, jointly build curriculum system and teaching content, jointly implement the training process, jointly evaluate the training quality, and explore the implementation of "order" training mode.