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Preface and Acknowledgments I wish I could thank someone for helping me finish this book expeditiously, but I do not regret the long haul. Research began over twenty years ago, in recognition of a crucial dimension hitherto missing from my work, the international dimension. My research on Latin American higher education had been mostly comparative as it dealt with government-university relations and with private versus public higher education. During fieldwork on those topics , I was repeatedly struck by either the legacy or the seeming lack of legacy of prior efforts to export progress through international assistance to universities . Preliminary exploration then gave me the exciting sense that the university was a key focal point of an unprecedented peacetime crusade to export progress through resources, ideas, and expertise. This was international assistance for large-scale institutional and national development. It was a period of high hope for Third World domestic reforms, dependent on importing progress on a grand scale. My challenge would be to catalog and understand the efforts and to assess what impact they have had. The difficulty of meeting that challenge is the main reason for the long period between the start and finish of this project. A related reason developed as accumulating evidence showed the significance of research centers, often shaped by international assistance. Because these centers, many of them private think tanks, play contemporary but sometimes fleeting roles of significance , studying them assumed chronological priority. Two other book projects of immediate policy relevance also intervened between then and now. Revision of this more historical study could be continually postponed, especially since the bulk of fieldwork had been completed, including interviews with retirees and others whose memories were fresh with knowledge and perspectives that needed to be tapped and preserved. The postponements have exacted a price, but they have also allowed time for me to rethink and to gather further perspectives. A nonhistorian has learned much about the difficulties and rewards of historical research. Although nobody could help much with efficient production of the book, many have helped with its content. The book depends heavily on information and perspectives from interviewees. Appendix B lists the formal interviews, and there were countless additional conversations for which I am grateful. I am especially indebted to those who read and commented on much or all of the manuscript: Eduardo Aldana, Jorge Balán, Jozef Bastiaens, Andrés Bernasconi , John Harrison, Iván Jaksić, José Landi, Lewis Tyler, and Gilbert Valverde. Others who commented on particular chapters, sections, related x | Preface and Acknowledgments papers, or grant proposals are Philip Altbach, Robert Arnove, John Brademas , José Joaquı́n Brunner, Burton Clark, Regina Cortina, Marcos Cueto, Paul DiMaggio, Thomas Eisemon, Philip Foster, Roger Geiger, Manuel Gil, William Gormley, David Jones, Carlos Pedro Krotsch, Kathleen McCarthy, Tim McDaniel, Gil Merkx, Keiko Miwa, Marcela Mollis, Robert Myers, Carlos Ornelas, Beryl Radin, Luis Ratinoff, Jamil Salmi, Simon Schwartzman , Martin Trow, Douglas Windham, and Alfred Wolf. Two doctoral assistants —Jorge Arenas Basurto and Jozef Bastiaens—contributed greatly. With affection, I thank them for their dedication and care. Additional doctoral student help came from Yingxia Cao, Xiaoying Chen, Carlos Colley, Keiko Miwa, and Yan Zheng. Carm Colfer and Barbara Grubalski provided able secretarial assistance. Ideas for the book began while I was at the Higher Education Research Group, and early research took place while I was a member and then an affiliate of the Program on Non-Profit Organizations; both these research groups were part of the Institution for Social and Policy Studies, Yale University . But most of the research and all the writing has come during my time as faculty member of the Department of Education Administration and Policy Studies (and the Department of Latin American and Caribbean Studies) at the University at Albany, SUNY. The three institutions that hosted me for extended periods of fieldwork are the Academia de Humanismo Cristiano (CERC) in Chile, El Colegio de México (in its centers for sociological and international studies), and the Center for Economic Teaching and Research (CIDE, in its centers for political and public administration studies). Other host institutions included the University of Costa Rica, FLACSO–Costa Rica, and IBAFIN in Mexico. Valuable feedback was obtained from talks given at these sites, at academic association meetings, and at the American Council on Education, Bildner Center for Western Hemisphere Studies at the City University of New York, Colombian Institute for Higher Education Promotion, Harvard University, Inter-American Development Bank, International Institute of Education, Latin American Scholarship Program of...

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