Agricultural Program is Young, But Influential

It is rather unusual that a university located in a city distant from farming centers should have a distinctive program designed "to give a higher education to farm leaders."

John D. Black, Henry Lee Professor of Economics, says that "if societies are going to advance, their grown people need to keep on learning."

"Only in agriculture, however, has a system of education for men and women outside the classroom been organized thoroughout the nation. This system has come to be known as the Agricultural Extension Service.

"But to have organized such a system is not enough. The system itself must move ahead or it will decay. Above all else, the 10,000 or so men and women in the Agricultural Extension Service must be qualified better and better for their tasks."

It is at this point that Professor Black and his staff in the Littauer Building of Public Administration take on the task of training more completely a group of 17 men and women who, at the end of their training, will receive a Master's degree in Public Administration.

Carnegie Fellowships

The Agricultural Extension Training Program was begun four years ago under a grant by the Carnegie Corporation. Thus far 35 men and women from 25 states have held the fellowships which allow a year of study. Over half of this number have continued their studies, working for, or planning to work for their Doctorates.

Those studying under the unique program are nominated by an advisory committee of the Agricultural Extension Service, and are selected by a committee composed of Edward S. Mason, Dean of the School of Public Administration, Professor Black, director of the program, and Charles R. Cherington '35, secretary of the School of Public Administration.

Those fields to which "The Harvard Aggies" devote their study include mainly public administration, agricultural extension methods, economics of agricultural extension methods, economics of agriculture, government, education, and social relations. The required courses are Economics 279, "Land Use and Conservation", and Government 250, "Government Regulation of Industry."

Those enrolled in the program have been previously active in agricultural extension work, and the grant is awarded with the intention that they continue their work in this field after completing the period of study allotted to them.

Student are Elderly

Characteristic of the Carnegie fellowship holders is an average age of 40, a home state beyond the Alleghenies, and a college degree from a state university--frequently from a local extension of the university.

Most of the students had, upon leaving their work, an executive position with the Agricultural Extension Service in their own home state, and most of them will return to the same position.

The Agricultural Extension Service has an annual budget of sixty million dollars, subsidized by the government, and is incorporated under the Department of Agriculture, with a central organization in Washington.

Providing adult adduction in farm areas and working with local 4-H clubs, the Extension Service advises on farm and rural problems through its staffs of district leaders and country agents. A corps of state specialists in the different phases of agriculture and home management introduce and demonstrate the latest techniques developed in the Service's farm laboratories.

Commenting on this venture to give higher education to farm leaders, Black says, "Probably nothing that Harvard has ever done has qualified it more as a great national university than its undertaking to reach out in this way to the six millions of farm homes in the United States."