LASPAU's Early History

In 1959, David Henry, then director of admissions at Harvard University, traveled to Africa with a small group of U.S. university admissions directors ready to offer assistance to the newly decolonized nations. At the time, there was only one university in Nigeria and one in Ghana. Stephen Awokoya, then Nigeria's minister of education, approached Henry about placing Nigerian students in American schools.

Henry enlisted a circle of fellow admissions directors, including those from Brown, Amherst, and Bowdoin, and they set up a makeshift Nigerian scholarship program. The effort eventually grew into the African Scholarship Program of American Universities, which went on to link students from 24 African nations with hundreds of universities across the United States.

The African Scholarship Program of American Universities' achievements were highlighted at the 1963 meeting of the National Association of Foreign Student Affairs (precursor of NAFSA), which Gabriel Betancourt attended as head of the Colombian delegation. Betancourt had founded the Instituto Colombiano de Especialización Técnica en el Exterior (ICETEX), the Colombian student loan agency, in 1950. At the time, it was the first institution of that kind not only in Latin America but in the entire world.

Following the NAFSA meeting, Betancourt contacted David Henry about bringing the African Scholarship Program of American Universities to Latin America. The Latin American Scholarship Program of American Universities (LASPAU) was launched by ICETEX and Harvard University the following year, and David Henry went on to serve for six years as Chair of the initiative.

LASPAU’s initial goal was to provide opportunities for undergraduate study to academically exceptional Latin American youths of limited economic means in fields not available in their home country and for which there was a priority need. Thirty-four U.S. colleges launched the program by offering 39 Colombian high school graduates a fully financed bachelor’s degree course. Henry Holland served as the founding director. The students, selected in cooperation with ICETEX, undertook intensive English language training in Colombia in order to enter U.S. degree programs in September of 1965.

As soon as this first group obtained admission to U.S. universities, plans were set in motion for a second round of grantees. It had already become apparent to LASPAU’s founders that one of the great services the program could offer was to contribute to strengthening Latin American institutions. Consequently, the second group of students included both individuals who had recently graduated from high school and students who were already enrolled in Latin American institutions of higher education. The latter group committed to returning to their home institutions to teach on a full-time basis for a period of four years following the completion of their exchange programs.

In addition to students from Colombia, the group selected in 1965 to begin studies in the fall of 1966 included individuals from Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, and Peru. One hundred and forty LASPAU students were accepted at 130 U.S. universities.

With the second group of grantees, the U.S. Agency for International Development began covering the students’ maintenance, books, and incidental personal expenses. USAID also took over most of the administrative costs of the program, which had been covered by the Ford Foundation in the start-up phase of the effort. U.S. universities—who had fully funded the initial group of grantees—continued to provide tuition scholarships and to participate as dues-paying members of LASPAU. From this point onward, all of the grantees obtained English language training and/or cultural orientation at international training institutions in the United States.

“The combination of student self-help, U.S. university scholarships and USAID support, plus the Latin American university’s guarantee of future employment to LASPAU scholars, has resulted in a cooperative, educational program designed to strengthen Latin American universities in the very area where help from U.S. universities can be most effective.”

—Rep. Donald M. Fraser of Minnesota on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, late 1960’s

In April 1966, LASPAU was incorporated as a nonprofit organization. That year, 200 students were selected and placed in 150 North American institutions to begin studies in the fall of 1967. This third round of grantees came from all of the countries previously participating as well as from Belize, Bolivia, Ecuador, Mexico, and Paraguay. As with the second group, some had just graduated from high school and others had several years of university studies already behind them.

Having observed the progress of the first three groups of grantees, LASPAU determined that the program could best serve students who had undertaken prior university work. It was therefore decided that candidates selected to begin studies in the fall of 1968 would need to have completed at least three years of the normal five-year Latin American degree course. These young people would commit to returning to teach in the schools and universities of their home countries upon completion of their U.S. studies—the genesis of LASPAU’s longtime interest in faculty development. LASPAU would no longer offer a program for students who had only completed high school.

37 of the initial group of Colombian students obtained undergraduate degrees in the spring of 1968, closing out this chapter in LASPAU’s history. Thirty-two of these grantees gained admission on their own merits to U.S. graduate schools. The remaining five returned home at the conclusion of their undergraduate programs to begin teaching careers at universities in Colombia.

Over the initial three years of the Latin American Scholarship Program of American Universities, the program was gradually modified to accommodate transfer students, to include study through the master’s degree, and to require grantees to return to teach in the schools and universities of their home countries. When LASPAU was incorporated as a nonprofit organization in 1966, it took the name of the early program. The grantees were called LASPAU scholars, referring to the program itself rather than to the organization that now bore the same name.

By 1968, the program had evolved to a true collaboration of funding partners. Latin American universities nominated outstanding undergraduate students in academic disciplines of the university’s own choosing and committed to providing full-time faculty positions to the grantees upon their return. U.S. universities welcomed the grantees to their campuses, providing scholarships for tuition and participating as dues-paying members of LASPAU. USAID funded the students’ maintenance, books, and incidental personal expenses, as well as most of the administrative costs of the program.

The grantees themselves obtained loans from partner institutions in their own countries to finance their English language training and international transportation costs. These institutions, which also helped to publicize the program and administer qualifying exams, included ICETEX, the Instituto Peruano de Fomento Educativo (IPFE), the Fundación de Crédito Educativo in the Dominican Republic, and the newly established Central de Becas in Mexico.

An interesting facet of this program is that the candidates were undergraduate students at the time of nomination by their universities—the faculty of the future rather than of the present. This makes the commitment of the Latin American universities to provide faculty positions for the grantees upon their return all the more striking. Nominees were required to be in the top quarter of their class, demonstrate clear evidence of significant financial need, and study in a field that the nominating university wished to strengthen.

“The success or failure of the LASPAU program can be measured by the success or failure of the human material that it prepares. That success lies precisely in our achievement as a group of a common and clear objective: to serve our country as a catalyst in that crucial phase of our development which is university education. This means that giving a class is not an end in itself. Rather it is a means to provide our students with the motivation necessary, on the one hand, to acquire specific knowledge, and on the other, to understand their real position in society and their responsibility toward it.”

—Eduardo Niño, an early grantee from Colombia who received a USAID-funded bachelor’s degree in Educational Leadership and Administration from Cornell in 1969 and a master’s degree in 1973

In 1969, LASPAU reorganized its staff, appointing four assistant directors who each had responsibility for a specific geographical area in Latin America. These regional directors developed productive professional relationships with the rectors, vice-rectors, and deans of the universities in the countries that they covered, enabling them to assist with institutional efforts to develop staffing plans and determine how LASPAU could be most useful in helping to meet those plans.

By 1970, the LASPAU candidate pool had expanded to include young instructors who were just beginning their teaching careers, in keeping with the organization’s focus on faculty development as a component of university development. LASPAU also determined that all current and future grantees should complete master’s degrees, even though many students who originally entered to obtain an undergraduate degree would require six years to achieve the full complement of studies. This decision was based on the fact that grantees who left the program with only an undergraduate degree often found it difficult to compete successfully for faculty positions because they were not sufficiently grounded in their fields of specialization.

“Despite the threatened decrease in U.S. public support for aiding Latin America with its mammoth human problems, it is vital to maintain open communications between the peoples of the hemisphere. Matters of current sensitivity between governments, such as trade, foreign investments, and control over nature resources, are not the only areas of continuing interest to North and South Americans. LASPAU is an attempt to build institutional ties between universities and human ties between people. Successful relationships of this variety will endure no matter how existing political problems are finally resolved.”

—LASPAU 1970-1971 Annual Report

As LASPAU focused more clearly on faculty development, greater consideration was given in the selection process to the candidate’s commitment to a university teaching career, to the university’s commitment to the candidate as a future faculty member, and to the match between the candidate’s qualifications and the university’s development priorities. The financial need of the candidate remained an important factor. As university teaching experience became a selection criterion, the proposed degree program shifted markedly. Of the 149 grantees who began their programs in 1966, 138 (93%) were undergraduates. In 1974, all but 9 (5%) of the 238 new grantees were graduate students.

By 1974, LASPAU had awarded scholarships to a total of 1,600 individuals sponsored by 161 universities in 18 Latin American countries. These scholars studied at 272 institutions throughout the United States. The most common fields of study were engineering and the natural sciences. That same year, USAID notified LASPAU that it intended to gradually withdraw support from the LASPAU Program, a result of reduction in USAID’s own budget for Latin American assistance and a narrowing of its priorities to social programs involving the poorest of the poor.

By mid-1975, LASPAU had successfully negotiated contracts with the Fulbright Program and with Banco de México. The Fulbright Faculty Development Program—which has supported university development through faculty training since 1975—began in Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, and Ecuador. Additional Latin American and Caribbean countries were added over time, and over 3,000 faculty members from higher education institutions throughout the region have now obtained advanced degrees or conducted short-term research in the United States through the program. The Banco de México Program provided scholarships for 75 Mexican university professors and administrators between 1975 and 1982, when other program sponsors (including CONACYT and, later, the Fulbright Program) took over the initiative.

LASPAU is in the process of writing a complete history of the organization. Please check back for more information.