Levy, Daniel C. (2005) To Export Progress: The Golden Age of University Assistance in the Americas Bloomington: Indiana University Press
Whenever things work, it is donor assistance oriented. Whenever things don’t, it is related to domestic forces.
Introduction: To Export Progress pp. 1-19
p. 1: “. . . a study of change: what change was pursued, and what change was achieved”
Was the change reformist or transformative? Reform is, per Clark Kerr (ex. Chancellor of U. California system & FSM time), “change achieved through voluntary choices made in conscious pursuit of values, amounting to development by design.” (p. 1)
The “golden age” for universities – 1960-1975 – coincides with Alliance for Progress. The “philanthropic ideal type of change” – use of a paradigm of reality to look at reality. In this instance, it is philanthropic organizations and their staff that define the ideal type, and support work that engages this type in real situations.
Levy’s Analytical Rubric – Utterly Modernistic in how he uses it in this book – especially Chapter One
Chart I. The Philanthropic Ideal Type of Change
Integral Aspect Associated Aspect
GOALS Altruism, helping others and/or the Progressive, non-revolutionary modernization and
public good sustainable development
Attacking root problems integrated altruism and enlightened self-interest
Major changes; reform; transformation Pragmatic goals
MEANS Voluntary giving Consistency with goals identified above
Something extra Undertaken w/ purpose, knowledge & professionalism
Specific undertakings Innovative, experimental, risk taking, flexible
Careful selection of few direct targets
Distinctive, reform-oriented, trusted partners as targets
Giving distinctive from basic public mainstream allocations
Mainstream bypassed or encompassed indirectly (donor to
Target to mainstream)
Careful concentration on front end (project formulation and
Target selection) although influence is ongoing
RESULTS Achievement of goals identified above Direct transformation of targets
(alternatively, achievement is associated
aspect, and the integral aspects are Leveraged impact on mainstream
limited to goals and means)
More imaginative failures than dull successes
Philanthropy – comes in many forms – funds, ideas, expertise, and “other enabling resources”
Philanthropy = “scientific giving” (per Arnove, 1980)
p. 6: “Philanthropic selection, with its core notions of distinctive and selective voluntary giving, stands apart from a model of responsive democratic public allocation postulated in political-economy theory, where funds go reactively to the “democratic mean or, to relax the democratic-egalitarian assumptions, to those who make powerful demands. It also stands apart from social welfare or statist models featuring annual subsidization on a fairly standardized, equal basis across the board, with general accountability to all parts and often with only incremental changes from year to year.”
Leverage – the ways in which philanthropic efforts focus on specific examples of change and work to see them expanded to broader swaths of society.
p. 8: “Arnove (1977: 100, 105) observes that the Ford Foundation attempted to use higher education to “‘modernize’ the world,” by relying on “the best minds,” leadership cadres, professionalism, managerialism, and the concentration of resources in favored areas, but he regards all these as elitist, technocratic, status quo approaches.”
Chart 2. U.S. University Export Model versus the Latin American University Tradition
United States Latin America
System configuration
Centralization/ Institutional autonomy Nationally set policies
decentralization No sole system-wide form Standardization
Multifaceted inter-institutional National university at core
differentiation
Size Large Small
Facilitated access Restricted access
Incorporation of more socio- Elite dominance
economic groups
Institutional Centralization/decentralization
Administrative Strong executive Power wielded by separate professional
institution-wide managerial power with chaired professors and ample
with authoritative governing student political participation
boards and limited student
political participation
Students as clients Students as professional trainees and citizens
Substantial self-financing by Dependent on government funds
institution
Unified campus Scattered faculty buildings
Academic Integrated departmental structures Isolated faculty structures
General studies or liberal arts Professional career preparation
Flexible university-wide credit systems Lock-step professional program
Unified library, laboratory, and other Faculties have own facilities
Facilities
Academic work
Quality Academic professionalization Part-time instructors who are practicing
Includes major graduate level and professionals
research Focus on first-degree professional training
Relevance Importance of applied research ties to Priority on setting own course with autonomy
productive sector, social service, and or service to professions and state bureaucracy
lay representation in governance
Relating to exporting the U.S. Higher Education University model, Levy cites the work of Rudolph Atcon of President Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress. Atcon, writing in 1966, was paternalistic and vitriolic, and assumed non-US universities to be Napoleonic in orientation – legacy of France’s spread of enduring education forms in the late 18th, early 19th century. For Atcon, the universities throughout the Americas were too much the example, as outlined in the chart above – semi-autonomous schools, professional in orientation (rather than liberal arts), professionalist curricula and pedagogy ruled the day.
The U.S. Model:
(1) Change structural configuration and increase size of university system – open up to middle class, stop elitist orientation
(2) institution building – especially around inter-institutional centralization. End practice of having each university be freestanding and universal in offerings. Rationalization – as in South Africa case. Understand what could be better shared, and then focus on special strengths that can remain decentralized.
(3) Quality – competitive examinations, evaluations (of faculty and students), scientific study, and graduate enrollment expansion and research.
Good point made – bottom of page 12, top of page 13 – the “U.S. Model” was hardly descriptive of the majority of U.S. colleges and universities – which are overwhelmingly teaching oriented, undergraduate, community college, part-time faculty, non-competitive access, commuter students, etc.
DUH! – page 13: “Explanations of the U.S. university influence must acknowledge general U.S. military, political, economic, social, and cultural influences, especially in the superpower’s backyard, Latin America, as well as the eagerness of U.S. donors. But a further factor was the perception by Latin America’s leading reformers that the U.S. university offered the best blueprint for change.”
Levy points out that little research has been published about the place/role of development assistance in education, aide, that is, from philanthropic reports and anti-philanthropy polemics.
Study seen in the remainder of the book focuses on the “golden age” and universities in Chile, Colombia, Coast Rica, Mexico, and Argentina, with universities in additional countries mentioned, but not focused upon.
Chapter One: Perspectives on Change pp. 20-33
Looks at the various literatures for work on university expansion:
(1) international assistance
(2) national development
(3) domestic policy reform
(4) international philanthropy
All four literatures share a basic sequence – optimism shifts to pessimism shifts to critical balance
Levy again calls the resource transfer in international assistance “essentially voluntary” (page 21, top) – he certainly does not take a critical analytic perspective of “self-interest” - his definition is rather limited and limiting. There are numerous reasons why assistance may seem voluntary, but be part of a larger strategy for which “voluntary” is inappropriately used.
p. 21: “Aid should be seen as a transaction that the donor would not make on grounds of economic self-interest alone. . . . donors acting for cold war national interest reasons could nonetheless believe they act to promote development.”
Levy characterizes the international assistance literature as including cliques that are harshly critical of the process and the motivations – impacts are major and deleterious (Ahmad, Arnove, Berman, Colclough, Goodell, Leach, Mundy, Roett, Trias, Weisman, Wilke); moderate – i.e. donors are too lax (Ranis); moderate – assistance provokes little change; caustic – donors are too tough (Phillips).
Levy tries to show – page 23 and onward – a “third stage review,” an “overlay” between dependency and modernization analyses. At the bottom of page 23, Levy makes the Homeric (Simpson) observation that modernization proponents espouse development as offered; while dependency proponents are critical of it. DOH!!
Modernization = Westernization = philanthropic ideal type matches the structure of goals, means, results.
Good things that modernization could bring: political, economic, social, cultural, and psychological development; efficiency and equity; strengthened civil society and pluralism; etc.
Modernization – like the philanthropic ideal type – privileges education (schooling); rational development management; expertise, and ideas.
Where modernization and the philanthropic ideal type diverge is around philanthropy’s focus on specific, discrete examples that are reproducible – modernization would go whole hog BIG from the get go.
Modernization = western hegemony over lesser, weaker, colonized countries. Donors retained control. Assistance entrenches local elites – compradors.
Within domestic policy literature – foreign assistance = federal assistance to cities. Foreign assistance is voluntary, as the U.S. government can stop it whenever it wants. Levy looks at federalism and the connection to governance in the USA, as something of a parallel to how assistance works country to (smaller) country.
Tie in some of Ward Heneveld’s World Bank report on how materials development didn’t look at how teachers did (and did not) get trained to use materials, nor were sufficient materials delivered to enough places – so, as an example of evaluation that focuses ONLY on the parameters of the project, and not on any aspects of reality that intrude upon them, this seems fitting.
Prismatic Models – via Fred Riggs – two types of manifestations – Displacement/overlap and Formalism. Each is defined to be something to avoid – to look for in analysis, at the risk of leaving out what has actually resulted.
Displacement sees the new overtake and push aside the old forms. There is co-existence, but the new gains greater and greater attention. Displacement is opposed to modernization, since displacement does not result in transformation, but only lateral arabesque moves.
Formalism – assistance brings new laws, statutes, structures that do NOT bring new practices or functions or behaviors. The emergent form is NOT reflective of reality, but takes its place as proxy.
In analysis and evaluation – distinguish between stated goals and true goals, between explicit goals and implicit goals.
Another Homeric moment - p. 33: “And we have to consider the crippling or facilitating effects of economic or political realms beyond higher education itself. . . . An extensive study of U.S. efforts to promote Latin American democracy concluded that no assistance for democracy has long succeeded, “unless local conditions were propitious”. Accordingly, we ask if university assistance programs have yielded significant change when conditions surrounding the program allowed.” Doh!! Not a deep statement.
Chapter Two: Givers and Receivers pp. 34-75
Foundation (Ford Foundation), bilateral (US Agency for International Development - USAID), and multilateral (Inter-American Development Bank - IDB) donors vs. the receiving nations. Who is giving? Who is taking?
The chapter is NOT results focused, but goals and means focused.
FORD FOUNDATION
created in 1936, expanded beyond Michigan only in 1950. Held, by the “golden era,” 16% of the wealth of all U.S. foundations. Latin America led Ford Foundation giving in education, with a special focus on higher education.
Higher education is, by its nature, more selective, more limited, and thus giving has the potential for greater impact than primary and secondary education.
¾ of all FF giving into the 1970s was for higher education.
USAID
Education programs in Latin America rooted in educational exchanges from the 19th century onward. Other US agencies dealt in education for diplomatic or defense purposes. Land grant universities got into the “development” arm of educational giving post-WWII.
By 1961, when USAID replaced the International Cooperation Administration, and Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress (and Peace Corps, and, . . .) came into play, USAID was to focus entirely on long term Third World socio-economic development. Initial focus on literacy efforts soon gave way, in Latin America, to interest in higher education – fighting illiteracy by developing local capacity.
Total assistance in the 1960s and 1970s was over $100 million to 74 universities – for what its worth, an average of $5 million per year, and thus an average of about $70,000 per university per year – not really all that much money, even 40 years ago. As Levy points out, USAID left the heavy lifting in this regard to the IDB and host governments.
Grants outpace loans – when looking at education programs.
Inter-American Development Bank
Linked to the OAS, with the US government centrally affixed. An attempt by Americas-based governments to form an effort that was more focused on regional matters than were the World Bank and IMF. The Social Trust Fund –absorbed into the Fund for Special Operations in 1965. By 1970 - US government contributed 43% of resources, and had 42% of the votes, followed by Brazil and Argentina with 12% each (leaving 33% remaining, a serious minority for all other countries to comprise – serious inequality) – the chosen focus was higher education.
Of all IDB programs, education received only a small percentage, again, through the Fund for Special Operations.
Bricks and mortar approach to giving for education – building schools.
Loans outstrip grants when looking at education programs. IDB gave broadly for higher education – over the period 1962-1985 – loans to 115 universities, each member nation represented in loan receipt.
After 1985 a refocus away from higher education. 1997 – reversion back to higher education, but with a much greater selectivity than previous eras.
OTHER FOUNDATIONS
Rockefeller (1913) – page 42 – “From its inception through 1950 it was the giant in Third World university development. In the last half of the 1950s, Rockefeller was spending about $10 million a year on twenty or more Third World universities.” Again, on its face, a lot of money, but in quick analysis, averages less than $500,000 per university per year. When a place like UNC shoots for a $2 billion capital campaign, half a million a year for ten years seems awfully miniscule.
Kellogg (1930) – health and agricultural sciences were the focus – not education per se. By 1980, Latin America accounted for 60% of Kellogg’s international expenditures (this representing about 1/6 of total foundation giving).
Carnegie Foundation, Guggenheim Foundation, Tinker Foundation, Lilly Endowment, MacArthur Foundation, Hewlett Foundation, and Mellon Foundation all contribute to higher education in specific areas (For Carnegie, Africa has priority geographically, with library development being a specific interest topically).
OTHER U.S. GOVERNMENT AGENCIES
USIA – LASPAU – remember AAI days, where AFGRAD/ATLAS was the corresponding program to LASPAU. Faculty development, some graduate student assistance (scholarships).
NSF, Peace Corps, Inter-American Foundation, National Endowment for Democracy – grassroots development with an indirect higher education appeal.
OTHER MULTILATERAL AGENCIES
World Bank – see other notes for Handbook chapter. Not until 1963, says Levy, did the WB look toward higher education. Subsequent to that time, 6% of all giving has been directed toward higher education-connected work. Higher education ahs at various times been a darling, and a scapegoat of WB programming – it takes a great infrastructural investment to make higher education work – from host governments and donors. Much more of an investment than does primary and secondary education.
UNDP – UNESCO – scholarships, graduate education, integration of research and teaching into development conceptions, curriculum development, pedagogy work, distance education, information systems and technology, etc.
OVERALL GIVING – see chart on page 48
Latin America trails Africa in terms of focus on higher education, and trails Asia in the gross quantity of overall giving.
By 1970s, Ford had cut its overall giving for international expenditures by one-third. By 1978, levels were one-fifth the 1965 level. More specifically, giving to universities dropped by 2/3. By 1980-1984, only six universities in Latin America were receiving Ford Foundation assistance. Ford’s focus was on freestanding research, rather than university development, per se.
USAID – 1965 had 23 university level projects in Latin America. By 1978, it was down to ten. USAID also shifted away from university-focused development toward informal education, media technology, and employment activities.
IDB similarly shifted course, focusing more on primary and secondary education by 1978.
Rationales for cutbacks – host governments took up more of the burden, as enrollment spikes outstripped donor desire to maintain the portions of overall assistance that had historically held; changes in political leanings of some Latin American governments saw philanthropy as overtly determining local politics in ways that were not acceptable.
The modernist, modernization perspectives of the foundations and bi- and multi-laterals did not hold by the 1970s, so they distanced themselves from certain kinds of efforts.
Also, higher education expansion came to be seen both locally and from donor perspectives as being an elitist effort – free university education was provided, true, but to a privileged minority, many of the members of which were born into affluent, powerful families that hardly needed free anything.
Levy tries to point out – page 50 – that this turn away higher education was in keeping with the voluntary nature of philanthropic efforts – this seems disingenuous to me. It seems more reflective of global politics of the time, and the global economic scene – oil price shocks; inflation/stagflation; etc. I have to think along with Arnove on this – giving didn’t dissipate because it was voluntary, it dissipated because donors were unhappy about results.
The 1990s revival is sparked in large part by notions of “knowledge societies,” especially as espoused by the World Bank – investment in “tertiary education” by the WB sparked renewed interest from foundations and donors.
Page 52 – “The basic issue for assistance and politics is especially sensitive here because higher education is intensively about molding people, including leaders and ideas, and because the international dimension raises concerns of dependency and sovereignty.”
Foundation giving is innately reformist – after all, if nothing were missing or wrong, why give in the first place? But who determines WHAT is wrong? And who determines the reasons and rationales for what is wrong?
Example of donor arrogance – page 53: “Unusual are statements like Enarson’s (1962: 2) on Central American universities: “These are sick universities struggling to survive in sick societies”.”
Other criticisms – universities were inefficient.
Other attitudinal aspects of donors – choosing a model of higher education that was U.S.-based, and imposing this model on places that were not the U.S. To what degree are universities a function of the societies in which they exist? To what extent should they be such?
Rockefeller “overreaching” – focus on a small number of specific universities – Colombia (del Valle University); Chile (National University) and Brazil (Federal University of Bahia) – unclear criteria for choice of sites left feeling of Rockefeller bypassing worthy alternatives, while not strengthening relations even where giving happened. The overreach also concerned assistance to entire universities, rather than the older practice of giving to specific faculties, specific efforts. Overreach for Rockefeller was short-lived – began in 1964, curtailed from 1968, ended not long into the 1970s.
Partners
A selective process and practice, as Levy describes, via examples. Meets philanthropic ideal type – selection of what to support is donor driven and voluntary. If clear criteria exist and are followed, recipients latch well with donors, and little imposition is seen. Again, here (pp. 57-60+) Levy is being a bit simple in his politics.
Another aspect of partnership was cooperative funding – leveraged support – foundations/bilaterals/multilaterals offer assistance if local and national funds are matched.
p. 62: “To conclude, the giver/receiver relationship in university assistance is mostly characterized by partnership. Though neither uniform nor symmetrical, the partnership is strong. It is also diversely displayed in mutual matching, joint reform, supportive sequential patterns, and cooperative funding. And the main, common example of one-sided control – front-end donor choice – is consistent with ideal type philanthropic means and is itself conducive to ensuring partnership.”
Targeted nations
“Nation” is only Levy’s first order unit of measure. He acknowledges that even in high target countries, many/most universities did not receive assistance. This will be reviewed in subsequent chapters.
Colombia was the highest recipient nation in the golden era. Only 4.2% of Latin America’s enrollment, but 10.3% of Ford funding in the region, 10.5% of IUDB funding, and 22.3% of LASPAU scholarships. Only USAID gave a lower percentage of assistance (4%) than the enrollment population share.
Chile got 28.1% of Ford grant funds, and 21.1. % of its scholarship support. It also received a high share of IDB funding into the early 1970s, but this waned over the 1970s (Pinochet politics, possibly?)
Brazil received 28.2% of Ford grants, though only 21.6% of scholarship assistance. IDB gave 34.8% of grant funds. USAID gave 43% of grant funds.
Costa Rica – because of civil peace and democratic practice, says Levy, page 63 – received far higher percentages of assistance relative to enrollment population shares.
Non-targeted nations
Argentina, Uruguay, Mexico, Venezuela – each had far higher enrollment population shares than the percentage of assistance received. Argentina’s early favorite position (1950s) and 1966 coup are invoked as reasons why it slipped during the “golden era” focused on in Levy’s analysis.
Patterns of selectivity
Levy looks at the above descriptions of “targeted” and “non-targeted” and comes away with the analysis of selectivity as evidence of voluntary, ideal type philanthropic giving – could also be evidence of political agendas on the part of foundations, bilaterals and multilaterals.
Finally, page 69, some “key characteristics” of choice – regime type, geopolitical relevance, higher education development level, and receptivity to externally favored reform.
Democracies did better than authoritarian regimes. Military regimes did particularly badly. Giving clearly did not match circumstances in Argentina and Uruguay, where the university system was well-established such that enrollment population shares for Latin America outpaced general population shares. Levy describes this as “host country receptivity” to assistance for higher education. Presumably, the more developed countries felt they could run their own systems. Again, this seems like possible evidence for a desire on the part of funders to “control” higher education, and where they couldn’t because the higher education was already well developed, they opted out.
Page 72 – Levy reiterates the focus of foundations and lateral funding agencies on REFORM – a middling moderated focus, leaving out political leftists and rightists – but Levy again seems to think this leaves politics out, when in fact, it is an adoption of centrist politics that do not trouble the GLOBAL status quo.
I am unconvinced by Levy’s beginning to the conclusion section, wherein he again sifts through the evidence to find a leaning toward ideal philanthropic type, with some mention, but little incorporation of analysis of global politics.
Chapter Three: Modernizing the System – Diversification and Expansion pp. 76-131
Expansion and diversification of institutional location and offerings; autonomy of member institutions within a nation’s university system. Focus of this chapter starts with “U.S. export model in higher education.”
A focus on diversification is a “beautiful” fit with the ideal philanthropic type. Expansion, when it meant more of the same structures, is a less seamless fit with the ideal philanthropic type. Expansion when it is also diversification is the best of the best.
U.S. pluralism (multiple and diverse institutions with autonomy) versus Latin American corporatism (few institutions, relative strong role for the State, little intra-competition between institutions, little autonomy) – page 78+
At the start of the golden era, giving focused on national universities - sites of national identity around higher education – and thus, to an extent supportive of local notions re: higher education. This focus was due, in part, to a lack of alternative sites to otherwise support - if not the national university, then what?
p. 84: “Whether initially or within a very brief time, national universities showed themselves to lack enough of the requisites for partnership with donors.” It is quote like this that will leave me to ask how this can be read as anything other than a statement that donor interests were what defined “requisites.” Levy still seems to be willfully eliding the global politics of this analysis.
What to make of this juxtaposition – page 86 – of two sentences within the same paragraph: “They were usually targeted either at still-small institutions eager for partnership or at reformist units within larger, less reform-oriented universities. . . . On the other hand, donors were trying to operate at or near the mainstream, rather than eluding it in favor of distinctive institutional alternatives.”
Colombia’s National University is profiled – but yet again, Levy leaves any detail of global politics out – page 88: “One of Ford’s own sponsored academics campaigned for the directorship in sociology on a hostile [to Ford, presumably] platform, yet Ford felt compelled to continue financing him lest it appear to take sides.”
Page 89: “Once the “Marxist” stage passed, it would be possible to see assistance to Colombia’s National University as having produced much long-term good in the social sciences by developing human resources and professionalizing norms in teaching and research.”
Levy points out that investment in best universities (national universities, in most cases) was not exactly a choice of giving to “peak” institutions, since these institutions, relative to North American universities, lacked much infrastructure and programming (graduate, library, administrative, etc.). Thus, giving was not to “peak” schools, but best (in the situation) institutions.
Amidst Levy’s “other factors” influencing the selection of partner institutions is #5 – NUMBER FIVE among OTHER FACTORS:
page 94: “Efforts to serve U.S. interests were also almost always assumed, though they were not often directly or abundantly evident. Where a U.S. university counterpart was heavily involved, its specific interests were sometimes explicit, as with Ford’s University of Chile – University of California convenio. But we see little evidence for a dependency view that donors fundamentally pursued their own interests either in indifference of in opposition to recipients’ interests.. Instead, as with the role of U.S. interests in favoring certain nations over others, what operated was the optimistic faith of modernization theory and philanthropy that donor and recipient interests are essentially complementary. The notion of philanthropic selectivity gains force where mutual interest was not considered a given so much as something achievable if projects carefully matched institutions to one another. Where AID or others chose U.S. as well as Latin American institutions for joint projects, there was a double selectivity, as with Chile’s Catolica and the university of Chicago for economics.”
p. 95: “Colombia’s University of the Andes [referred to subsequently as “Los Andes”] appeared almost too good to be true – a donors’ pet.” How can Levy be taken seriously when he writes something like this – the profile of Los Andes is striking – it received great attention and lots of money for a period of time, then faded as recipient – 1957 to the late 1960s.
p. 106 – why would such a description be needed – “Policymakers took care, however, to avoid gringo terminologyor reference to U.S. blueprints they studied [regarding Mexico’s Autonomous Metropolitan University]. Similarly, the principal architect of Argentina’s “Plan Taquini,” who drew on extensive firsthand experience as a U.S. National Institute of Health fellowship holder, avoided ideas that appeared too foreign, such as two-year colleges, and publicly downplayed the U.S. inspiration on matters where he privately acknowledged it.”
Levy’s point – pages 107-109 – that non-recipient nations did not develop the kind of alternative, non-state, decentralized examples of better university (leaner and meaner; more appropriate fit to the community of students; more efficiently run; more competently staffed; stronger faculty; etc.) that supported/funded nations did seems to belie his point that donors were not directive.
p. 114: “ . . . a key point emerges: donors excluded the great majority of proliferating institutions. They excluded most of those that merely accommodated demand or unreflectively as well as unimaginatively copied entrenched academic and administrative patterns. Herein, rather then in any class bias per so, lies the explanation for why donors disproportionately supported socially privileged institutions: less fortunate counterparts were less likely to have as much of the academic and administrative right stuff.”
Regional campuses, two-year colleges on the U.S. junior college model, and other institutional forms were supported (pages 114-116+). These boosted participation in higher education, and spread higher education to more geo-diverse and ethnically diverse locations. Levy calls the spread of the two-year, branch campus model “overreach” in the sense that it did not arise organizationally in the Latin American context, but was imported/imposed from the North. He then says it is not “overreach” because it was not tried in any widespread manner. Chile and Costa Rica are offered as case studies.
p. 122: “The main goal [of CSUCA – the High Council of the Central American University – a cluster funding example – 1960s era] was Americanization. CSUCA was to guide Central American higher education to a departmental structure, general studies, and growth. Sponsored conferences at the University of Kansas and elsewhere reflected the zeal and grand expectations for the reform, heralded as blazing the way for other Latin American universities.“
Modernizing impulses and actions DID impact universities – spread growth, increased access for some populations, streamlined some practices, expanded graduate opportunities, etc. From 1960 (550,000 university students) to 1975 (3.4 million students) – growth of 500%. To over 6 million students by 1985 (a further 70% increase).
Chapter Four: Institution Building: Centralizing the University pp. 132-173
Page 133 – the U.S. model for higher education was one thing; “Latin American reality was different.” – amazing that this doesn’t get taken further.
p. 133: “There is a sense, then, in which goals of university centralization envisioned a wholesale change from extant reality.” For Levy, “reformers” could envision and seek to enact this wholesale change with donor help. “Revolutionaries” would then be made out of these reformers when the wholesale change was realized. Concrete versus implicit goals.
Efforts focused on governance and finance – each of which saw institutions with a profile of strength in these regards more likely to be funded by donors, and thus further strengthened. Private universities that received assistance often reached goals sooner/more fully than public universities – the privates had leaner, more hierarchical administrations already in place – the “right stuff” – than did the publics.
New building – a less controversial undertaking for donors. Locals liked the increased facilities, as a rule, even preferred, in many cases, the donor-funded buildings over home-built buildings.
Libraries – an attempt, in most cases, to supplement existing facilities rather than create new facilities – IDB was big in this field.
Prismatic patterns -filters through which to observe – or possibly, what is observed when initial efforts split into component pieces, and must be worked back together (or not). Or possibly, a non-linear means of analysis and project evaluation that sees such splits as a function of the project analysis model. Or possibly the ways in which new ideas were realized in the prism of local contexts – new campuses did not mean, for example, that faculty would organize any differently, so that if a faculty remained insular and separate this could be painted as “prismatic patterns” in new institutional formation.
In all of Levy’s mentions of campus disruption and “centers of disruption” (p. 151), and student activism, he neglects to mention the global events that saw American campuses become centers of disruption.
p. 154: “In short, the goal of academic centralization fit the philanthropic ideal type in representing a transformation from the status quo. Critiques and initiatives by domestic reformers, often inspired by foreign experiences and ideas, had failed to alter matters much before the golden era.”
The issue in the above quote is one of specialized faculties controlling university entry for students to the point of being very insular – choosing their own, educating their own, to become their own. What could a student do is s/he found the particular faculty, the particular program of study not to his./her liking? Answer: only start all over somewhere else, in another department, or outside university altogether. Could “general studies” curricula be instituted?
Selectivity on this issue came most from Ford Foundation.
Rather than admit that results are disappointing or counter-intuitive, or . . . Levy relies on the “prismatic” designation – meaning determinations of success or failure depend on your prior point-of-view.
Conclusion – what crap, really!
p. 170: “Donors looked to universities already decentralizing, or at least inclined to centralize. This was targeted voluntary giving based on merit and promise. Donors repeatedly distinguished themselves from domestic governments by not scattering their efforts widely or randomly throughout the system. They certainly did not try to impose a standard U.S. model.”
Chapter Five: Academic Work pp. 174-219
Full-time faculty
Research opportunities
Graduate education
Expanded/new fields of study
Achieving full-time status for professors/academics – page 175 – “A rejection of common Latin American practice, it epitomized the orientation of assistance toward big change and the philanthropic ideal type.”
Full-time faculty was a core issue or “root problem” for donors – part-time nature of most faculties reduced time spent teaching, reduced capacity for research, reduced quality interaction with students, etc.
Donors “spinning webs” – page 176 – full-time professorate was essential to the academic web that donors and their reform partners hoped to spin.”
Explanation at the bottom of page 176 gets EXPLICITLY at the U.S. focus on university models used by Levy in his analysis, and in donor action.
p. 176: “Mediterranean nations including Spain relied on part-timers. The most advanced European nations relied on “academic estates’ tied to state service more than separate professions associated with autonomous universities.”
p. 177: “For academic professionalization, modernization meant Americanization.”
p. 178: “Opponents of “academic imperialism” in general did not usually reject the full-time concept itself and could speak well of foundations’ efforts to professionalize disciplines even while criticizing AID.”
Later on page 179, Levy admits that there was confusion as to how widespread the desire for change toward full-time faculty could be, given the specific, limited nature of donor assistance for this. “Such a lack of clarity in efforts, of course, reflected a lack of clarity in goals that arguably contradicts philanthropic ideals.”
IDB efforts at university building, and physical plant expansion often incorporated increased full-time faculty as a further need/desire.
LASPAU (mid-1960s) was USAID/USIA’s chief effort at improving faculty circumstances, around research opportunities, and full-time status as well. Otherwise, USAID did not overtly pursue full-time faculty establishment.
Assistance of donors focused on ‘alternative universities” rather than public, state universities. Chile’s Catholic University reached 50% full-time after 17 years of support from Rockefeller, Ford, and IDB. Venezuela’s Simon Bolivar university reached 75% full-time by 1983, with IDB loans.
After a brief discussion of the impact at the university level, Levy moves into departments and institutes within universities, where ever-more focused assistance pushed full-time faculty percentages to high levels.
p. 184: “The assistance success regarding the academic profession was a relative one. It brought out a good deal of prismatic displacement. The initial juxtaposition of forms produced by careful targeting alongside an untouched mainstream was supposed to diminish as targets turned into models, but this dynamic was overwhelmed by the massification of enrollments that inevitably meant massification in the professorate. Most new professors were very poorly trained. They were not brought in through careful assistance projects. What was “new” was mostly old, or traditional, not innovative or superior. All this obviously violates the philanthropic ideal type of change.”
Universities as “the enemy” to repressive states – finally, another sop to actual contemporaneous history – page 185.
p. 191: :To identify such unanticipated consequences undermining donors’ goals is not to assign the major blame to assistance. Failures resulted mostly from the domestic factors cited. The main effects on the academic profession were positive. The biggest problem with assistance was its lack of greater impact. Perhaps this reflected too small an assistance effort to achieve goals of academic professionalization, but there were major efforts and the philanthropic ideal type assumes limited, focused effort.”
On the very next page, 192, at the start of the very next section on Research, Levy writes, “Ambitious goals. Donors and their partners had transforming goals for Latin American research.” Later, in the same page, same topic, “Here again, defying notions of dependency, assistance aimed for major change tied to major growth.”
Selectivity re: research expansion – foundations (Ford, etc.) were most selective. Agricultural research (funded by AID, Rockefeller, Kellogg, etc.) also saw success.
p. 202: “In Latin America generally, the growth of graduate education has come mostly not from reformist blueprints but from factors antithetical to the philanthropic ideal type. It has obeyed mostly non-academic commands. It has followed dynamics of institutional pride or student demand much more than those of program preparedness or extra-university demand. It ahs smacked of massification and become wastefully expensive even when the total numbers remain comparatively small. . . .”
Even where Levy points out that donor assistance failed, he still wants to leave the donors feeling good: page 204 – “The good graduate education that was created should be seen as a special triumph for the donors and their reform partners precisely because it was so rare, precious, and hard to achieve without assistance. That success does not change the fact that the prismatic displacement and overlap have featured much more unreformed than reformed terrain surrounding the new hybrid terrain where the graduate education mix simultaneously represents improvement and disappointment.”
Fields of study – a donor favorite, as new initiatives by definition focus on particular fields, thus connect with donor interest in “selectivity” and narrow change. Example- from 1917-1970, Rockefeller pumped 90% of its funding into health-related fields. IDB focused on engineering; Ford went for social sciences.
p. 209: “Donors thus engaged in vigorous efforts at change regarding fields of study. They utilized their freedom as voluntary actors to experiment and innovate, to give in specific ways that moved sharply away from traditional patterns.”
An honest measure, finally, maybe – p. 212: ‘Furthermore, many of the assisted peaks at least maintained their relative lead in ensuing years. That explains why Fulbright files in the 1980s showed that visiting scholars continued overwhelmingly to choose places such as the University of Chile in chemistry and to praise them in the end-of-tour reports.”
Chapter Six: Promise and Performance in Exporting Progress pp. 220-243
This chapter works through the “relationship between the facts discovered and the ideal type of philanthropic change.”
p. 221: “But our findings have particular relevance where key contributors (of fresh models and resources) are largely voluntary and aspire to major change.”
p. 223: “A significant gap between explicit and implicit goals applied not only to matters within higher education but also to the relationship between promoting university development and promoting national development. University assistance projects simultaneously carried explicit goals about university development and implicit visions about impact on national, economic, social, and political development. How one could lead to the other was the topic of treatises on the role of education in development and of rousing phrases in some project rationales, but the mechanisms through which one would lead to the other usually had to be left very vague. Linkages were assumed or proposed out of sincere conviction and out of political necessity, to build support for expenditures and other efforts, and even sometimes to build rationales for painful change.”
Over-reach – page 224 – when efforts exceed what the ideal type of change would have them appear (explicit) to be.
“Although over-reach partly reflected the exuberance of an overlapping modernization ideal type and its underestimation of obstacles, we stress that it also reflected a sober sense of the insufficiency of more limited efforts to achieve grand goals. So as not to concede too much ground to the status quo, donors sometimes attempted to engage in less-promising countries, innovate at conflict-ridden national universities, achieve growth at non-elite institutions, and promote academic centralization where opposition to it was formidable.”
Donor control – p. 226: “Partnership [in efforts] meant limitations on donor control, fitting the ideal type much more than dependency arguments.” Hardly, at least the way Levy describes thing – he is so fully apologetic of donor assistance that there is little substantive critique at all, making it seem- to me at least – that he may be wary of actually engaging his data.
p. 227: :Because ambiguities and even contradictions exist among the ideal typical means, no definitive, neat fit could emerge between them and real efforts. Nonetheless, the main generalization that flows from our findings is that actual efforts mostly fit the philanthropic ideal type – and in ways crucial for understanding undertakings in the golden age.”
Levy’s predisposition to a positive analysis – page 228 – “Because they were attentive and thoughtful more than sanctimoniously operating from a rigid blueprint, and because the attempt to export progress through universities extended over years, donors developed a sense of the inconsistencies involving their preferred efforts and what they could achieve.”
DUH! - p. 231: “Many reforms that make perfect sense in the abstract or as part of the U.S. model lose their rationale or become infeasible when injected inside a foreign context. Others lose at least some of their rationale or become infeasible in certain respects.”
p. 235: “. . .compared to most of what was, most of what surrounds it, and most of what would have been without assistance [how can Levy seriously offer this kind of faux-knowledge?], prismatic change is better seen as bolstering our view of mixed results than negative results.” -- certainly, if you presume you can know what would have happened if . . . then this view of prismatic change might be pertinent. But its overuse throughout the book, and Levy’s reliance on an ill-fitting, pre-judged rubric means this concept of prismatic change is simply a face-saving way to view disappointing results.
