Bachelor of Agriculture

UNE has been teaching agriculture out of Armidale since the 1950s and the degree still runs on the assumption that graduates need paddock-ready skills, not just classroom theory. Students spend real hours on the university's own working farms in the New England region doing things like pregnancy-testing cattle, soil sampling, and pasture assessment as assessed coursework rather than optional add-ons.

Students pick a specialisation in animal production, plant production, or mixed farming systems, and the New England tablelands setting shapes which one tends to dominate enrolment: this is sheep and cattle country, so animal production and the various livestock genetics electives draw the biggest numbers, though UNE's plant production stream benefits from the same research strength that backs the university's long-running work in pasture agronomy.

Because a large share of UNE's agriculture cohort comes from farming families or rural NSW/Queensland towns rather than capital cities, the degree also runs fully online with 24/7 tutor support for exactly that demographic. Someone running a family property doesn't necessarily want to relocate to study, and UNE built its entire institutional identity around solving that problem for regional Australia decades before "online learning" became a mainstream option elsewhere.