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Structural Change in Higher Education: Implications for Agricultural Economics Extension; or Does Diffedence, Decadence and Dissonance Make a Difference?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 April 2015

George McDowell
George McDowell*
Affiliation:
Extension leader in the department of agricultural economics, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
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Abstract

Discussion of changes taking place in American agriculture followed by a review of the traditional model of extension suggests there is dissonance between what is needed to inform contemporary agriculture and what extension actually does. The paper further suggests that difficulty in packaging the newly needed information in ways that achieve the institutional maintenance objectives of extension explain a part of the system's decadence and reluctance to change. Since the intellectual problems of market failure, even political market failure, are within the domain of economists, diffidence by agricultural economists to those issues within the Land-Grant system can make a difference.

Keywords

contempory agriculturedissonanceextensioninstitutional maintenancemarket failure
Type
Invited Papers and Discussions
Information
Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , July 1993 , pp. 131 - 137
Copyright
Copyright © Southern Agricultural Economics Association 1993

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References

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