Rejoinder: No, Still Too Many and Too Cheap
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
Fall 2004
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Abstract
I want to thank Hudson and Lusk for their contributions to the ongoing debate about graduate agribusiness management programs. I am grateful for their response to my Commentary (Starbird), and for their obvious commitment to their students and to our profession. In my comment, I put forth several hypotheses about why there has been such a tremendous expansion in the number of publicly funded graduate agribusiness management programs. In their paper, Hudson and Lusk address the demand for agribusiness management education, the public vs. private supply of programs, and the role of agribusiness management in the agricultural economics profession.
I have four points of contention with Hudson and Lusk; two related to their apparent misinterpretations of my paper; and two rebuttals of their arguments.
Hudson and Lusk have somehow inferred that I equate the lack of private university participation in graduate agribusiness management programs with deterioration in program quality. I do not measure the quality of graduate agribusiness management programs by the level of private school adoption. Nowhere in my paper do I make such an outrageous statement. On the contrary, I believe that the quality of public versus private university programs is not significantly different, and so students make their decisions based on cost, not quality. Naturally, the subsidized tuition of Land Grant institutions makes it very difficult for private institutions to attract adequate numbers of students at a tuition level that makes the programs viable.
Recommended Citation
Starbird, S. A. (2004). Rejoinder: No, Still Too Many and Too Cheap. Review of Agricultural Economics, 26(3), 423–425. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9353.2004.00190.x
