earlier Michigan State contract, along with the Wis-
consin Land Tenure Center and FAO, has resulted in
the training of several agricultural economists to the
M.S. level. Also the Rockefeller Foundation and the
University of the Valley had initiated some training in
agricultural economics. Y et, the profession was essen-
tially initiated by the MASUA group. The same can
be said for agricultural engineering.
Several consultant teams which studied the Colom-
bian agricultural situation hi the early 1960’s recom-
mended the establishment of graduate programs in
agriculture within Colombia. A small graduate
program in agricultural economics, at the masters
level, was initiated by the University of the Valley
with Rockefeller Foundation support in 1968. At the
same time, an agreement between ICA and National
University established ICA-National University
cooperation for the purpose of offering advanced
training in various agricultural sciences. Thus, the
ICA-National University graduate school currently
offers the M.S. level training in the various plant
sciences, animal sciences, agricultural economics,
agricultural engineering, entomology, and extension-
communications.
Without the assistance of the MASUA-Nebraska
team members, it may have been impractical for
Colombia to offer undergraduate work leading to
specialization in agricultural economics, agricultural
engineering, nor the animal sciences, and the initia-
tion of graduate training would have been difficult. In
the longrun∙, the establishment of graduate training
competency within Colombia may constitute the
major contribution of the MASUA-Nebraska group. If
South American agricultural institutions and research
do tend to be overly “gringoized”, then what is
needed is the development of indigenous professions
concerned with South American problems and possi-
bilities. Perhaps, the most effective way of achieving
such an indigenous profession is the establishment of
indigenous training institutions.
Given the current Colombian competence and the
availability of large numbers of North Americans in
Colombia, there is no reason that graduate training in
Colombia should be inferior in any way to that in the
U.S.A. Further, given the rapidly growing scientific
competence within the Colombian community, there
is no reason that all of the teaching at the Masters
level should not be done by Colombians. Further, in
certain areas of the plant sciences, there is probably
sufficient Colombian competence to offer the Ph.D.
degree.
There is reason to think that Colombia has the
potential to make a major contribution to Latin
American agricultural education on a regional basis.
There has been a tendency in much of Latin America
to isolate agricultural training from general university
education. For example, agricultural graduate training
centers in Brazil, Mexico and Peru are located in
agricultural schools or universities that do not offer
broad range university training. On the other hand,
National University in Bogota, the site of the ICA-
National University graduate program, is a complete
university. Given the excellent supporting work in
general economics, basic sciences, statistics, etc., it
would appear more feasible to develop quality doc-
toral programs in the agricultural sciences than would
be the case in the more limited agricultural type
university. It should be noted, however, that there are
other universities, for example, those in Chile and
Argentina, that appear to have advantages similar to
those in Bogota.
SUMMARY QUESTIONS-INFERENCES
1. Can the development of competence in inter-
national agricultural technical assistance be institu-
tionalized as a part of the role and mission of the
LandGrantsystem?
AID directors, including Dr. Hannah, have empha-
sized the importance of the University-AID partner-
ship. However, if the university role is restricted to
that of acting as an administering agency to assemble
a staff to perform a specific job with no previous or
subsequent relationship to ongoing activities, real
benefits to the university are not obvious. Further, if
the university is to rely largely on free agent profes-
sional staff, as opposed to permanent faculty, in such
work, it is not clear that AID could not perform the
role; equally well. If a relatively large permanent AID
staff is not considered to be feasible, private enter-
prise offers one alternative to the university. One can
hardly fail to be impressed with the magnitude of the
agricultural assistantship programs currently being
carried out by private companies.
Clearly, what is needed is a continuing evaluation
of the university’s role in international affairs as well
as continuing considerations of university relation-
ships with USAID and other funding agencies. Some
universities have taken major steps to identify objec-
tives and to structure programs in the international
devélopmcnt area [17]. Others appear to be oper-
ating on a rather ad hoc basis. AID-University rela-
tionships have been under continuous review and
major changes appear to be in the offing [12,16].
The degree to which Land Grant universities find
it possible to institutionalize international develop-
ment will depend to a large extent on the funding
agencies, primarily, USAID. There is little reason to
expect that the individual states will undertake major
financing of international development faculties. The
foundations, through resource base grants, have in
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