The Effect of Higher Agricultural Education on its Graduate's General Development

The aim of the present work is to study the effect of higher education on the general development of graduates in various fields of agriculture. A survey research method was used in this study. A simple random sample (n=170) was selected from the population (N=1474). Graduates (Members of the Organization of Agriculture and Natural Resource's Registered Engineers from Tehran province) who had received their bachelors degree in agricultural engineering during the years 2002-2003 constituted the statistical population. Validity and reliability of the questionnaire, based upon Cronbach's Alpha coefficient was found out to be 0.71-0.93 for different sections of the questionnaire. The results indicated a significant relationship between access to information sources and the quality of college education, and the four factors of 1) personality traits, 2) specialty knowledge and skills, 3) communication and social traits, and 4) economical standings. College qualitative and quantitative facilities have a significant relationship with the graduate's personality traits as well as with their specialty knowledge and skills. A step by step regression analysis indicates that 25.6 percent of the variables in general development of the graduates is determined by access to information sources at the college, being a boarder student, university qualitative and quantitative provisions, membership in student extracurricular activities, and the quality of college education.