To Export Progress: The Golden Age of University Assistance in the Americas

Notes

Notes Introduction 1. “Nonmilitary” is qualified by the raging “cold war” and by how the assistance under study can be related, regarding motivation and goals, to simultaneous military assistance. 2. An alternative main title for this book would be To Export and Import Progress , and one side cannot be treated well without the other side. The Third World’s development would be more externally driven than Western Europe’s had been (Riggs 1964: 39), and it would be directed by collaboration between exporters and importers . 3. Our treatment of change sharpens further by concentrating on the international dynamics of development-by-design. “Transfermation” would capture the sense of transformation through transfer. 4. Both to export progress and golden age evoke the tenor of the time in university and general development assistance in the Americas. As our evidence builds, the words prove reasonable regarding efforts as well as goals, but golden age proves exaggerated if extended to results. Golden age or golden era has been used extensively, including for university development assistance (Eisemon and Kourouma 1994: 276), North-South university linkages (Bastiaens 1997: 10), development of U.S. research universities in the 1960s (Geiger 1993: 198–229), higher education in Europe (Cerych and Sabatier 1986: 224), and the role fields like the economics of education could play in studying and promoting national development (Blaug 1985: 17). The golden age label stands out still more in contrast to an ensuing era of “profound pessimism,” far from “the euphoria of the 1960s,” as Neave argues for West European higher education (Neave 1995: 387). And the contrast between hope and ensuing disappointment was especially pronounced in the Third World. 5. Phillips (1976b: 123–25). A “synergistic negativism” emerged in attitudes on development, assistance, and higher education (Eisemon and Holm-Nielsen 1995: 6). Donors’ disillusionment contributed to abandonment of university development goals (Eisemon and Kourouma 1994). Skepticism likewise grew about how well international university linkage programs worked (Berry 1995: 8). The World Bank’s landmark policy paper on higher education cites evaluations highlighting problems in prior giving and inability to obtain institutional and development objectives (World Bank 1994: 93). A bottom-line if indirect and harsh indication of failure, as in the Phillips citation in this endnote, is the sad contemporary status of higher education in developing areas. For Africa, efforts to create “development universities” (1970s) “ultimately had little impact” (Saint 1998: 55–56). For Latin America, too, both agencies and scholars have made mostly negative assessments of the state of higher education (IDB 1997: 5–10). Specifically on assistance, observers interviewed in the late 1980s, a time by which impacts from golden age efforts should have been discernible , assessment was downcast. As one authority put it, “It’s the fashion in donor organizations to belittle university assistance,” especially that directed through insti- 300 | Notes to pages 3–5 tutional development projects rather than the narrower efforts, including individual scholarships, that overlapped, preceded, and followed the golden age (Schiefelbein i-2). A veteran AID official reported the agency’s general view that its grand efforts in the Latin American university were an overall failure (Taylor i-2). One of the most prominent consultant-scholars of the golden age saw frequent failure in AID projects linked to universities (Waggoner 1972: 186). Indeed, as analyzed in chapter 2, by the mid-1970s all major donors dejectedly and sometimes bitterly turned away from the Third World university, especially in Latin America. A negative tone then lingered, partly through reiteration, partly through lack of challenge. The donor community mostly sees its historic university effort in disillusioned, chastened terms. Also negative is the academic literature (however limited) on assistance to the Latin American university. Probably the most prominent scholar of philanthropic assistance to Latin American universities in the golden age was quite negative; his edited book, Philanthropy and Cultural Imperialism, was in the same vein for the Third World overall: “A central thesis is that foundations like Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Ford have a corrosive influence on a democratic society” as powerful yet unregulated actors that strengthen the status quo and the ruling class against “Third World peoples” (Arnove 1980b: 1). Another leading, related critique was Berman (1983). If such views have not been reaffirmed by equally prominent scholarship, neither have they been challenged by it. Finally, a negative view characterizes public opinion regarding foreign assistance, as reflected in polls and media reports. More information on disenchantment appears in chapter 1, on the critique of international assistance generally, and in chapter...