Agricultural schools across the country, which are struggling to attract students, are now encouraging students to "think outside the barn."

In response to flagging enrollments, especially in the traditional plant sciences and production agriculture, colleges are turning to new and innovative ways to attract potential students.

Marcos Fernandez, associate dean of Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences, said the college experienced a decline in enrollment for 10 straight years but was able to boost enrollment in the past three years.

"We had dropped almost a third in enrollment. In 2005, we had a bump, then we had a larger increase in 2006," Fernandez said. "We're hoping it will continue."

In response to the decline, Penn State changed the way it markets the college to prospective students, Fernandez said.

"It's more about telling the story of who we are in a fresh and new way," he said.

Part of Penn State's marketing plan included a new Web site for prospective students, www.thinkagain.psu.edu. The brightly-colored Web site features facts such as "1 in 6 jobs in the United States has a connection to food or agricultural sciences" and slogans like "Think Outside the Barn."

Fernandez said the emphasis of the marketing campaign is on applying the skills learned in an agricultural major in creative ways, rather than emphasizing traditional farming and production agriculture.

"You have to let people know it's there, and you have to let them know in a way they will understand," Fernandez said.

Some colleges have changed the names of their schools of agriculture to broaden the appeal.
At Iowa State University, officials added the words "life sciences" to the name of the college in June to broaden its appeal after enrollment fell.

David Acker, the associate dean of the Iowa's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, said the name change was part of a broader effort to attract students.

"We hired a marketing firm and asked them for advice," Acker said. "We moved to electronic marketing and started doing a better job of communicating to students the wide range of majors available in the college."

Partially as a result of the college's aggressive marketing campaign, Iowa State has seen double-digit increases in the number of new students each year, Acker said.

The decreasing enrollments are seen mostly in the plant sciences, with majors such as agroecology, horticulture and landscape contracting, Fernandez said.

"Especially with programs like plant biology and genetics, we're seeing a slight decline in agronomy, and the industry is telling us we need more experts," said Dale Whittaker, associate dean for agriculture programs at Purdue University's College of Agriculture.

Meanwhile, Acker said, the job market for agriculture students is strong.

Iowa State holds a yearly employment fair, the largest in the Midwest, for agriculture graduates, he added.

"Employers are begging to be let in ... but there aren't enough graduates to go around," he said.

Alex Lauffer (junior-agricultural and extension education), a member of Future Farmers of America, said declining enrollments in agricultural programs may not be permanent and may change in the future.

"It might be going through a cycle at this point," she said.

"As the fields open up and we don't have a lot of people doing it, the job value will go up."