Abstract

The management of teaching of business and other subjects abroad presents a whole matrix of problems which become more complicated and difficult the farther one gets from the developed industrial societies within whose institutions the American instructor normally works. A common situation in newly independent countries is that the country possessed no higher education at all or that the university or equivalent was staffed by nationals of the colonial power. There is probably no necessity here to evaluate the need for a national university in each new country. Like a jet airline to New York, it is clearly the mark of an arriving country, but a good deal more necessary. Even under the most amicable terms of independence, the new country at least wants to appoint its own nationals to university posts as they fall vacant by attrition; commonly, the upheaval is much greater. Teaching abroad requires considerable winnowing of classroom material. Institutions vary enormously between countries, even between the industrial nations fronting the Atlantic. In the newly independent nations, some institutions of the former colonial power may be preserved, but conditions are likely to be in considerable flux. In many countries, change is in the direction of socialism; in any case, there is likely to be a good deal of political sensitivity to institutional arrangements and their evolution.