Graduates who left school in winter 2012 or spring 2013 and
specialized in a number of agricultural fields – including agricultural
economics, agricultural education and crop science, among others – are making 5
percent more than those who graduated a year ago, according to Mike Gaul, the
Career Services Director for the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences at
Iowa State.
“Five percent is pretty doggone good,” Gaul said in an
interview.
Gaul said he’s particularly pleased with jumps in salary for
recent graduates in agricultural education, an industry that has had trouble
attracting students in the past. This year, the average entry-level
agricultural education teacher made $40,762 – up from $37,002 in 2011/2012.
“It’s really good to see those [salaries] finally move
north,” Gaul said, especially because small-town agricultural programs without
teachers are sometimes forced to abandon agriculture education altogether.
Though eight of the nine sectors evaluated saw salary jumps,
one was left out of the trend: environmental sciences, fisheries, forestry and
wildlife biology. Those wages fell a little over seven percent. Government
hiring freezes may be responsible for those numbers, Gaul said, as federal,
state and local authorities grapple with sequestration and other budget
challenges.
The data serves as a “good recruiting tool for us,” Gaul
noted. Though he said he does not encourage college students to base their
major solely on salary predictions, it can be helpful when it comes down to
choosing between two or more paths of study.
Sixteen agricultural colleges contributed to the data set.
A 2010 National Institute of Food and Agriculture study
conducted in partnership with Purdue University found 54,400 agriculture jobs
would be created between 2010 and 2015. It estimated, however, that
universities would only graduate 29,300 agriculture students to fill those
positions.
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