Yazd Agricultural Faculty Members' Viewpoints towards the Impact of Agricultural Higher Education on Human Development

The higher education system, as the most obvious manifestation of human resource investment, plays a key role in training and providing effective human resources. The agricultural higher education system is no exception to this rule. But, the question is, what should such a system look like for optimal impact on human resource development? This study aimed to analyze the gap between current and desirable situations of agricultural higher education system factors affecting human resources development (HRD) in Yazd province. The statistical population consisted of faculty members of Yazd agricultural higher education and research centers (N=253), 163 of whom were selected based on Krejcie and Morgan table using stratified random sampling method. The research instrument was a researcher-made questionnaire which its face validity was confirmed by a panel of agricultural higher education experts. The reliability of the questionnaire was confirmed by ordinal theta for both parts of current status (0.81≤θ≤0.87) and desirable status (0.83≤θ≤0.93). In order to process the data using SPSS24 and R software, in addition to descriptive statistics, Mann-Whitney test was used to compare faculty members' viewpoints towards the current and desirable situations of agricultural higher education system factors affecting human resources development. The results indicated a significant gap between the current status and the desired status of four factors influencing HRD (respectively increase in gap) including "job and skill competence of human resources", "process of training and educational planning", "balance in supply and demand and interaction with economic sectors "and" development of innovation in agricultural higher education system".