An efficient frontier provides information concerning the tradeoff between risk and return in farm enterprise choice decisions. If mean-variance analysis is used, the frontier is efficient in the sense that it represents a series of farm enterprise combinations, each enterprise combination having minimum risk (variance of returns) for a specified level of return. Anderson, Dillon, and Hardaker provide a discussion of the different types of frontiers and the different methods of deriving them.Development of efficient frontiers is particularly helpful when the risk among enterprises varies substantially (Schurle and Erven). However, efficient frontiers do not provide information about nearoptimal enterprise combinations. According to Heady and Candler the optimum solutions in linear programming need not be optimum for other criteria. Since farmer's utility functions cannot be completely specified in terms of risk and returns, decision makers and researchers should be interested in farm plans slightly different from those on the frontier in terms of risk and return levels. The usefulness and uniqueness of frontiers as a decision aid would be reduced substantially if these near optimal solutions included substantially different enterprise combinations. Other considerations of the manager may overshadow the differences in risk between near-optimal enterprise combinations off the frontier and the optimum plan on the frontier.Related work of an experimental nature has been done previously on the impacts of estimation error on the development of efficient frontiers. Frankfurter, Phillips, and Seagle found that the impacts of errors in estimating the mean, variance, and covariance are so strong that the usefulness of some mean-variance approaches to portfolio selection is brought into question. The model used in this analysis is somewhat related to other mean-variance Bryan W.

for helpful comments and suggestions.An intense national concern with the quality of higher education has focused unprecedented attention on undergraduate curricula. Newspapers, provosts' offices, faculty committees, journals, trade associations, alumni, study panels, and corporate leaders are echoing the need for change. Restoration, meaningless, scotoma, reform, obsolete, integrity, consumerism, inadequate, and crisis are words enlivening the debate of curricular affairs in higher education.Agricultural economists face the challenge of putting their own curricular house in order as well as an opportunity for contribution to broader curricular matters. In their faculty roles, agricultural economists plan and direct numerous student experiences. Curriculum encompasses the set of student experiences directed by faculty which leads to a baccalaureate degree. Curriculum is a plan implemented through courses. Although the focus of curriculum is courses and the mix of courses taken by students, development of faculty consensus on a vision of the educated person is the primary vehicle for curricular change. Reform stems from focus on desired changes in students rather than courses.This paper has three parts: background on current undergraduate curricular problems, a framework for addressing these problems, and central curricular issues facing agricultural economists. With its focus on curricula in higher education, several related issues are beyond the scope of the paper. Excluded is discussion of admission policies in public institutions, decision-making processes on curricula, enrollment of minorities, student retention, closed courses, funding of higher education, and faculty skills in pedagogy, assessment of student learning, and counseling.

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