The Students and Graduate's Viewpoints about Agricultural Major's Curriculum

This study was conducted with the aim of investigating the students and graduate's viewpoints about agricultural major's curriculum. A sample of 394 agricultural students (out of 1200 students) and 76 agricultural graduates (out of 100 graduates) from Tehran, Taribiyat Modarres, and Zabol Universities were selected based on stratified and simple random sampling. Stufflebeam CIPP model along with a researcher made questionnaire were applied to collection data in this research project. Viewpoints of the students regarding four criteria as objectives, content, method, and evaluation in agriculture education, along with graduate's opinion on the objectives, content, and level of their satisfaction from the major were investigated. The two groups provided information regarding weaknesses and strengths, threats, and opportunities in agriculture subfields. Content validity of the research tool was confirmed by a panel of experts in the field and its reliability was verified by Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient (α=0.87-0.90). The results indicated that students considered aforementioned criteria as relatively satisfactory and graduates assessed objectives, content, and field of study satisfaction as moderate satisfactory. Based on the results of SWOT analysis, the participants considered gender inequality ratio of student admittance to the benefit of female students, insufficient number of practical courses and low level of student's practical skills, repetitive courses, no link between theoretical and practical sections of courses, and lack of educational and research facilities as the main weaknesses.