Aspiration of the students of bachelor of Rural studies in north Gujarat

Introduction

India is the youngest nation in the world. More than 65 percent of the population is under the age of 35. According to a leading newspaper of India (The Hindu, 2021) [7] , by 2020, the median age in India will be 28 years; in comparison to 37 in China and the United States, 45 in Western Europe. This youth population is a rich resource of India, especially the rural Indian youth population, where our 75 percent population lives. Still rural India constantly facing socioeconomic and political challenges. Due to these challenges, the growth of rural India is suffering and millions are deprived of the rights to education, food and health care (Deshpande, et al., 2020) [2] . Bachelor of Rural Studies (BRS) opens the vast opportunity for Indian youth to contribute to rural development. It is a three-year degree course. It comes under the stream of humanities and social science. The objective of the course is to prepare the graduates to work for the development of rural areas, to make them understand the issues affecting the rural economy and work towards the betterment of the situation, through awareness, community mobilization and policy implementation. The course was introduced to the Indian academy keeping in view the rural economy's contribution to the overall Indian economy. The degree covers topics like the rural economy, statistics, cooperation, panchayat, animal husbandry, agriculture, horticulture, political science and entrepreneurship. BRS degree holders have opportunities in the field of rural development. They can become field officers, documentation officers, programme officers, area executives, agronomists, research heads, marketing and sales managers, territory incharge, business development managers, and district coordinators. They can also have an opportunity to work with different NGOs working in the field of rural development. Other than these there is a good scope of higher studies after the BRS degree. Master of Rural Studies (MRS), Master of Business Administration (MBA), Master of Social Welfare (MSW) can be pursued after BRS. These BRS colleges are working on Gandhian principles of education and set up in rural background. These residential courses make the students involved whole day in various educational and other personality development activities such environment makes up their minds as disciplined and workaholic nature. This present study was planned to assess the aspirations of BRS students.

Methodology

The present study was conducted in North Gujarat area. There are total 12 colleges in Gujarat offering the Bachelor of Rural Studies courses. Out of these, 7 colleges were situated in North Gujarat, at Amrapur, Jiliya, Madana, Nardipur, Ratanpur, Samoda and Sonasan. The BRS colleges of North Gujarat are affiliated under two universities. Hemchandracharya North Gujarat University (HNGU), Patan operating 5 colleges and other 2 colleges are operated by www.extensionjournal.com Gujarat Vidyapith, Ahmedabad. Total 6 colleges were selected for the present study. All the final year students of these colleges were included in the study and thus total 275 students were selected for the study in the following manner. Data were collected with a well-structured and pre tested interview schedule. Questionnaire as well as interview method were used for collection of data. Different scales were used to measure different variables selected for the study.

Result and discussion: General profile of the BRS students

Under this objective different variables were studied by using different standardized scales. These variables were also treated as independent variables for the study. The results are described under following headings:

Gender: Figure 1 indicates the gender of the respondents.

From the data it can be clearly concluded that the proportion of male and female students in the sample were almost similar. There were 52.36 percent male and 47.64 percent female in the sample. In Gram Sewa Mahavidyalaya, Gram Bharti Vidyapith, Amrapur there was only boys while in B. M. Shah Gram Vidyapith, Jiliya and Mahila Gram Vidyapith, Nardipur there were female respondents only. Family members: Table 1 indicates the number of family members in the families of the respondents. It can be observed that most of the families (66.91%) were composed of 5 to 8 members and followed by less than 4 members (26.91%) and more than 8 members (6.18%) respectively. were educated where as 32 percent of the respondent's mother were uneducated. It is also clear from the table that most of the parents were primary level educated. Family occupation: Following table indicates the family occupation of the respondents. It is clear from the table that most of the respondent's family occupation was farming and animal husbandry (42.92%) followed by farming alone (23.27%) and business (6.90%) respectively. Source of information: There were various sources which help students to acquire information about BRS college admission. This variable was measured by using a scale developed by Deshpande et al., (2020) [3] . From the available information sources, the students generally prefer very few sources for getting information. The informal source such as friend and family member were mostly used (64.00%) by the students to get information regarding admission followed by school teacher and social media and other mass media. Risk orientation: Among the psychological characteristics of the students' risk orientation was measured by using a scale developed by Supe (2007) [6] with some modification and the data are presented in Self-confidence: Table 5 shows the distribution of the respondents according to their self-confidence. This variable was measured by using scale developed by Rosenberg (1965) [4] with some modification. The table indicates 70.18 percent of the respondents had medium level of self-confidence followed by high and low level of confidence with 17.46 and 12.36 per cent respectively. Achievement motivation: This variable was measured by using a scale developed by Schuler and Prochaska (2000) [5] with some modifications and the data are presented in table 6. The table clearly shows that the most of the respondents (71.64%) had medium level of achievement motivation, followed by low and high level of achievement motivation with 14.90 and 13.46 percent respectively.

Aspiration of BRS students:

Aspiration refers to a person's or a group of person's orientation towards particular social status or status attribute like occupation, education, income and so on. In the present study, aspiration refers to BRS students' orientation towards education, occupation and enterprise aspiration.

A) Educational aspiration:

The educational aspiration was measured by asking the students about their future aspiration of further or higher study. It was measured in two parts in first part we try to find out whether they want to continue their study further or not and in second part if they want then upto what level they aspired to study. If any respondent did not aspire to study further, then their reason was also extrapolated. The data are presented in following Figure 5 and tables.

The figure clearly indicates that most of the students aspired to study further. Only 8 respondents did not want to study further due to the burden of other responsibility of family and lack of facilities in nearby areas. Out of 267 students 132 aspired to study MRS after BRS followed by almost one fourth of students wanted to get some vocational degree or any other degree like Master of Social Work (Table 7). C) Enterprise aspiration: Table 9 indicates the enterprise aspiration of the BRS students. As they were mostly from rural background so they aspired more towards agriculture (63.64%) and diary (58.91%) enterprise. The nursery management and small scale industry were also quite popular among the BRS students and these were liked most by 46.18 and 44 percent of the respondents.

Association between profile and aspiration of BRS student

To study the association between the profile characteristics and aspiration of the BRS students we applied correlation coefficient and the result has been showed in table 10. It is clearly observed from the table that parent's education, risk orientation and achievement motivation had positive and highly significant association with overall aspiration of the BRS students. Educational stream of the students, source of information and self-confidence had positive and significant relation with the aspiration of the BRS students. On the other hand, gender, background, number of family member and family occupation did not have any association with the aspiration of the students. The findings are similar to the findings of Biswas, et al. (2025) [1] .

Conclusion

From the study it can be concluded that most of the BRS students were from rural background had medium level of self confidence, achievement motivation and risk orientation. They prefer mostly gramsevak, diary and agricultural occupation for themselves. Most of them want to continue their study further in same stream of in Social work. The important variables which are significantly associated with the aspiration of the BRS students were parent's education, risk orientation, achievement motivation, educational stream of the students, source of information, and self-confidence.

References

1. Biswas A, Deshpande AR, Prajapati RR. Gujarat Journal of Extension Education. 2025;39(1):95-99.
2. Deshpande AR, Biswas A, Patel RN. Perception of farmer's son regarding agriculture as an occupation. Trends in Bioscience. 2020;13(8):483-489.
3. Deshpande AR, Biswas A, Patel RN, Agale SB. Information seeking behaviour of pomegranate growers in Banaskantha district. Trends in Bioscience. 2020;13(6):368-373.
4. Rosenberg M. Rosenberg self-esteem scale (RSE). Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Measures Package. 1965;61.
5. Schuler H, Prochaska M. Development and construct validation of a job-related achievement motivation test. Diagnostica. 2000;46:61-72.
6. Supe SV. Measurement techniques in social science. Udaipur: Agrotech Publishing Agency; 2007.
7. The Hindu. India is set to become the youngest country by 2020 [Internet]. 2021 Nov 17. Available from: https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/india-is-setto-become-the-youngest-country-by2020/article4624347.ece