<p>There are some farmers on my DH's side the family. A niece and grand-nephew (who grew up in two different families) wanted to attend the state university in the adjacent town. They planned to continue to live on their farms while going to school. In both instances, the fathers said "Absolutely not. You're not going to college. End of story." It was presumed that the niece would get married after high school and begin to raise a family right away. The nephew was expected to help his father run the family farm. Both deferred to their fathers' wishes and never went to college.</p>
<p>I had a chance to speak with both of them recently. Both wished that they had gone to college. They felt it would have afforded them greater opportunities. After graduating from high school, the niece married another farmer and had two kids. A few years later, they divorced and she could only find work at a convenience store. The grand-nephew continues to run the family farm by himself. His father is no longer capable of working due to alcoholism.</p>
<p>This brought up a question. Do most farmers want their kids to get a college education? I realize there may be no farmers on the CC forum who can answer this question. But I thought it might be an interesting topic to discuss.</p>
<p>This is really an odd question. Like any other group of people, some will and some won’t. How can we possibly answer in the aggregate?</p>
<p>I will note that there are large agricultural economics programs at many state schools. Don’t buy into the stereotype of the farmer as the uneducated person who merely works with his hands. There is a LOT someone needs to know to manage a farm well - animal husbandry, botany / zoology, some aspects of engineering, etc.</p>
<p>I heard similar anti-college sentiments from a family of autoworkers that are still close to me, over 20 years ago. Things change, opportunities were lost. This has more to do with mind-set than occupation. I’ve known a lot of smart, motivated and ambitious people from farming backgrounds.</p>
<p>Some farmers did/do. Consider the agriculture majors offered at various universities. Consider universities whose names indicate an agricultural education heritage (Texas A&M, Florida A&M, Alabama A&M, North Carolina A&T) even though they are now much more general comprehensive universities. Even one of the Ivy League universities has a College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.</p>
<p>I can just provide anecdotal evidence. We live at the edge of a farming community and many of my S’s friends are sons and daughters of farmers. From what he has told me all of these kids want to go to college and all of their parents support them in that. In a tie-in with the point of ucbalumnus, the school that most of them want to go to is Texas A&M, whether to study agriculture or not.</p>
<p>Very good point! If the parents do not value a college education, then they are unlikely to want their kids to go to college. This could apply not only to farmers, but any number of professions that typically don’t require a college degree.</p>
<p>Of my eight cousins ( two men, six women)who grew up on farms in the 60s and 70s, two went to college, two became nurses, one is a court reporter, and three did not go to any additional schooling after high school. Not one farmer in the group.</p>
<p>But we’re talking about the children of farmers, not necessarily the people want to go into farming (whose parents may or may not be farmers themselves). The parents can be farmers but some kids can end up going on to do all sorts of the things.</p>
<p>Just spent the weekend on Virginia Tech’s campus. There is a statue there of William Addison Caldwell, “Add”, the first student to register for classes in 1872. He was a farmer’s son and walked as much as 28 miles with his brother to Blacksburg from his farm to register. Had never noticed the statue before this weekend so this thread is quite a coincidence!</p>
<p>I think it depends on the size of the farm. To agree with Pizza as I often do…there’s small, there’s big and then there’s really, really big. Big and really, really big are more about running a business than milking cows and gathering eggs by hand and then there are the ranchers. There’s some mighty big ranch operations in Colorado and other regions. We ran into a kid (Michigan State graduate) in Telluride working for his father’s ranching operation. There really no one size fits all definition of “farmer.”</p>
<p>Add business and marketing to the list of topics that competitive farmers need to understand. Also, “farmers” is a broad category. There are 5 acre organic farms and 1,000 acre monoculture farms. I know people who own and operate both kinds of farms, and most want their kids to go to college.</p>
<p>I am from a large family of farmers - my uncle, 2 cousins and their 2 sons now run the farm. It is is a mixed bag for them in terms of college. The uncle, one cousin and one cousin’s son all “attempted” college - but ended up partying more than studying so none lasted more than a semester. Knowing that they had a full-time, well-paying job at home waiting for them regardless of whether they completed college or not was a major reason for their failure - the other was woefully inadequate preparation for college from our rural HS. </p>
<p>One cousin’s son ended up getting a Masters degree in Agriculture Science/Weed Management and turned down a well paying job with an ag chemical company to return to the family farm. </p>
<p>Added: My mom left the farm for college in 1955 and never looked back. </p>
<p>The story is similar for the girls - neither of the cousins my age went to college. They just got married and had kids. BUT all of their daughters eventually finished college (despite also getting married and having children young!)</p>
<p>I think the situation is probably similar to many people who own small family businesses. When the kids know that there is a job waiting for them at home - there’s not as much of an incentive to get a college degree.</p>
<p>We had one client who was a farmer. He was the son of a farmer. He went to & got a MBA from U of MI. Last I heard, I believe he sold his farm and was pushing his kids to get as far as they could in their education. So much depends on the individuals involved.</p>
<p>Farming is a very tough life that works for some but not for others. I know many whose kids do NOT want to follow in whatever the family business is, but so much depends on the individuals involved. It is often tough to have the 3rd generation to follow, even if the 2nd generation happens to follow the “family business” in our experience.</p>
<p>My brother lives on a family farm that has been in his wife’s family for at least 5 generations.
He and his wife both have degrees in business–she is a homemaker, he is a fireman. They rent out their land and don’t actually farm. S-i-l is from a family of 12 kids. NONE of her sibs wanted the farm. It was a tough life growing up there. Only a few of her sibs went to college–2 are teachers, 1 is a school principal, one is a nurse. The other sibs work in factories, sales, military.
My neighbor grew up on a farm in central KS. He is a nuclear engineer.</p>
<p>At a ceremony to recognize NM Semifinalists at S’s school, each kid got to introduce him/herself and say (if known) his/her potential major and college of interest.
I was surprised when the first kid got up and said “I’m going to State U to study agriculture.”</p>
<p>My mother and her siblings grew up on a farm. No one took it over and only two went to college. One with a degree in psychology and the other didn’t finish. The one who didn’t finish is now back in school. I should say that three have associates, and the other two boys of the families work trades like construction. We actually have one who started very young in the army and got experience with mechanics not sure if he ended up with a degree or not. He works for the rail-road and has been from a long time.</p>
<p>Now I have cousins who live on a farm and one is at a tech school who will transfer to complete a BS hopefully in computer science. He was expected to at least attend the tech school for an associates in something. The other son wants to take over the farm and doesn’t do well in school. He is super smart though. At a young age he was taking stuff apart and putting it back together. He works on a farm and his dad teaches him. The youngest is to young to know what she wants. I think it will be something with teaching or nursing.</p>
<p>I know for my mom her folks would not pay for anyone’s education it was expected that they did it themselves. Everyone still helped out at the farm after high school until a car accident left my grandfather paralyzed. He was in many accidents and the one car accident they actually thought he was died. They put the white sheet on him and everything. He now rents out the land.</p>
<p>I think most farmers want their kids to go to college. That was certainly true in my Mom’s family; 4 of her siblings went to college, two went straight into farming, and she got married just out of HS. DW also has a close family friend who is a farmer; he studied economics at the state land grant college and came back to work the farm with his Dad and brother, then in partnership with his brother, and now he’s bringing in the next generation, all college educated. With his economics background he’s run the financial side of the family farming operation essentially since he got back from college, because he’s smart, knowledgeable, and pretty sophisticated about financial matters, and he has a good sense which way commodity prices are moving based on global supply and demand factors (e.g., what’s the weather been in Brazil lately, as that greatly influences global soybean prices), when it’s a good time to hedge with commodity futures and options, when it’s a good time to store your crop and when it’s a good time to sell, and so on. </p>
<p>My grandfather who was a farmer used to say that anyone can farm, but to be a successful farmer you need to be good at everything—good with your hands, mechanically inclined, strong as an ox, good with and knowledgeable about both plants and animals, and a shrewd businessperson–so handyman, mechanic, engineer, veterinarian, horticulturist, and business maven all rolled into one, and your own grunt laborer to boot. I think that’s pretty much spot on.</p>
<p>I grew up in a farm town. My father was the son of a sharecropper,they never owned any land and mostof what they ate was either grown or shot. My dad and his 3 brothers went to college. One of the brothers was in WWII and then went to college on the GI Bill. He later paid for the younger brothers to go to the same LAC. Thank you to my uncle!!!</p>
<p>My mom grew up on a farm. Her father forbid her and my aunt to go to college but paid for my uncle.</p>
<p>About half of my friends from high school were from farm families. Those that went to college mostly became engineers or work in ag business. All have very successful careers.</p>
<p>My son will be attending an ag/land grant university.</p>
<p>Granted, I go to what was once considered a “farm college” but I know a LOT of people who grew up on farms, are studying various subjects related to agriculture, and many intend on going back to work on their farms or going to do something else agriculture-related. </p>
<p>Count me as another confused by this question. I don’t think it’s really different than any other occupation- some parents want their kids to go to college and others not as much.</p>