1648 



After its first few years of operation the Fulbright i)rogram came 

 under increasing criticism. Some felt that it was too limited — limited 

 to academic exchanges, to countries where the United States happened 

 to own "excess foreign currencies," to payment of transportation costs 

 of foreign students coming to the United States but not the costs of 

 supporting them here, and so on. Other critics, including Members 

 of Congress responding to the growing intensity of the cold war, wanted 

 either to abolish the program or to link it more closely to U.S. informa- 

 tion and propaganda activities. (Action taken after congressional 

 debate on the aims of the program is mentioned in the following section 

 on the Role oj Congress.) 



Lack oj Evaluation Procedures a Program Weakness 



A weakness of the ])rogram throughout its history has been a lack 

 of adequate evaluation procedures. As a consequence, not enough 

 attention has been given to systematic improvement of planning and 

 programing. The author comments '^^ that the need to assess the effec- 

 tiveness of the program has been pointed out repeatedly. According 

 to the program's lirst advisory commission in 1961: "We still know 

 too little about the processes of communication between cultures, 

 of attitude formation, of educational development in relation to other 

 aspects of national development." The successor advisory group, 

 the U.S. Advisory Commission on International Educational and 

 Cultural Affairs, has repeatedly called for development of a research 

 capability in the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. For 

 exam|)le, in its seventh annual report, A Afiilfitude of Counselors (1970), 

 the Commission reiterated its recommendations: ". . . We believe 

 that the development of a social science research capability in the 

 Bureau is a functional and urgent management requirement. . . . 

 Institutionalizing the evaluation and research function . . . would 

 give it the staying power which 'contracting out' lacks. It would 

 also provide the daily evaluation and research continuity which 

 operators of the program cannot themselves provide." ^'^^ 



Because of this shortcoming, the scientific exchanges which con- 

 stitute more than half of the Fulbright-Hays program ^^^ apparently 

 have not been evaluated in depth by agencies administering the 

 program : 



As a result, there are almost no appropriate measures of the impacts of scientific 

 exchanges, that is, accomplishments of grantees with respect to both the advance 

 of science and the promotion of scientific and political cooperation between the 

 United States and the Fulbright-Hays host country. [The] little information that 

 is available consists of unpublished reports prepared by the CIEP and annual 

 reports prepared for the Congress by the Advisory Commission on International 

 Educational and Cultural Affairs. ^°" 



Nevertheless, the Commission has been sufficiently persuaded of the 

 program's effectiveness to describe it as ". . . tremendously successful 

 and ... an important and significant element of American foreign 

 relations" (sixth annual report to the Congress, 1969). The Commis- 



"7 Ibid., p. 898, Footnote 59. ■ 



'88 Ibid. 



•88 So known since passage of the Mutual Educational and Cultural Exchange Act (Public Law 87-2o<')) 

 in September l'.)(;i. Sec further reference to the act in the section b(>low on the Role of Congress. 



i'" Knezo, op.cit. p. 89'J. (The CIEP is now called the Council for International Exchange of Scholars and 

 is part of the NAS Commissiou on Human Resources.) 



