Degrees Designed for Rural Business

Some business schools are creating programs so grads can apply their skills to the farms and businesses of rural America

by Alison Damast

Neal Ely's passion for farming has taken him from the business school classroom straight to the prairie. After graduating from University of Nebraska-Lincoln in December with a degree in agribusiness, Ely decided to return to his family's farm in in Grafton, Neb. Grafton has a population of 167, and there are corn and soybean fields as far as the eye can see.

Ely, 23, planted more than four-and-a-half acres of asparagus and recently launched his own specialty gourmet food business, Ely Farms, using his mother's "secret recipe" for pickled asparagus spears. While his ambition is no smaller than that of the business grads who head for the money centers of Manhattan or the entrepreneurial halls of Silicon Valley, his return to his rural roots is an anomaly for most business programs—a situation he'd like to see change. "We need to challenge people to think outside the box," said Ely, who spends his mornings packaging his farm's fresh asparagus and delivering it to supermarkets in local towns. "We have to figure out what we can do to keep rural areas alive and bring kids like me back home."

The problem of getting business grads to apply their skills to the farms and businesses of rural America is a pressing one in states such as Nebraska, Wisconsin, and Illinois. Dwindling populations, empty storefronts, and the shutdown of manufacturing plants have made the economic problems facing rural towns even more acute in recent years. Business school administrators are starting to realize they can play a role in helping to reverse—or at least slow down—the economic slide of some of these areas by creating innovative courses and extension programs that will encourage people to move back to these areas and start or work for local businesses.

Master's Programs in Rural Development

Some schools, such as Edgewood College in Madison, Wis., are creating master's degree programs in urban and rural economic development. Other large land-grant state universities, such as the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, are encouraging the growth of rural businesses through entrepreneurship centers, research grants to study rural entrepreneurship, and rural business mentorship programs. One school, Southern New Hampshire University in Manchester, is launching an MBA in community economic development for the first time this fall.

Indeed, business schools can play a key role in helping to rejuvenate the nation's rural areas, said John Fernandes, president of the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, the accrediting agency for business schools. The problem is that most haven't begun to think about developing programs or curricula in this area, he said. Of the AACSB's 671 member schools, only about 40 have programs that mention a focus on rural or local economic development and collaboration in their mission statements. "I think it is one of those things that has kind of flown below the radar of most business schools," he said. "It might be sort of a natural extension of schools in rural areas, but maybe the rest of the world hasn't been paying attention."

Critics contend that not nearly enough is being done by business schools to make a dent in the problem. More programs need to be focused on rural entrepreneurship, to equip people with the skills to start small businesses, said Chuck Hassebrook, director of the Center for Rural Affairs, a national rural advocacy and development organization in Lyons, Neb. "Business schools have not even come close to living up to their potential in this regard," he adds.