A Short History of US Development Aid to Higher Education, 1949–2025
American support for universities in other countries grew out of a domestic idea: that public universities should teach practical subjects, do research that solves local problems and carry their knowledge to the people who need it. This is a dated outline of how that idea became a strand of US foreign policy for three quarters of a century, and how it came to an abrupt stop in 2025.
The domestic model: land-grant universities
The Morrill Act of 1862 gave federal land to each state to fund colleges teaching "agriculture and the mechanic arts" alongside classical studies. The Hatch Act of 1887 added agricultural experiment stations, and the Smith-Lever Act of 1914 created the Cooperative Extension Service, which sends university specialists out to farmers and communities. By the mid-twentieth century this three-part model of teaching, research and extension was credited with much of the rise in US farm productivity, and it became the template Americans carried abroad.
Point Four and the first university contracts (1949–1961)
In his inaugural address of 20 January 1949, President Harry Truman proposed, as the fourth point of his foreign policy, "a bold new program" to make scientific and industrial advances available to "underdeveloped areas". Congress passed the Act for International Development in 1950, and a series of agencies, including the Technical Cooperation Administration and, from 1955, the International Cooperation Administration, signed contracts with US universities to help create or strengthen institutions abroad.
Agricultural colleges were the most common projects. In Ethiopia, Oklahoma State University helped establish an agricultural college that became today's Haramaya University; in India, the University of Illinois and other land-grant institutions assisted the new state agricultural universities, starting with Pantnagar in 1960. Similar contracts covered engineering, education, public administration and medicine in Latin America, Asia and Africa. Educational exchange developed in parallel: the Fulbright Program, created by legislation in 1946, was expanded by the Mutual Educational and Cultural Exchange Act (Fulbright-Hays) in 1961.
USAID and the 1960s
The Foreign Assistance Act, signed on 4 September 1961, reorganised US aid, and President Kennedy created the US Agency for International Development by executive order on 3 November 1961. University contracts multiplied. In 1964 a report for USAID by John W. Gardner, AID and the Universities, examined how the agency and US universities worked together and urged a longer-term, more equal relationship than short service contracts allowed.
Title XII and research consortia (1975 onwards)
In 1975 Congress added Title XII, "Famine Prevention and Freedom from Hunger", to the Foreign Assistance Act. It recognised US land-grant and similar universities as partners in agricultural development and created the Board for International Food and Agricultural Development (BIFAD) to advise USAID. Title XII led to Collaborative Research Support Programs, long-running consortia of US universities and partner institutions working on crops, livestock and natural resources. Many were later reorganised as Feed the Future Innovation Labs, described in our article on agricultural university partnerships.
Associations and networks (1990s–2010s)
From the 1990s, intermediaries helped smaller colleges as well as large research universities compete for partnership funding. The Association Liaison Office for University Cooperation in Development, founded in 1992 by six national higher education associations and later known as Higher Education for Development, ran USAID-funded competitions for partnerships with institutions in developing countries, with the American Council on Education as manager. In the 2010s USAID added programmes such as Partnerships for Enhanced Engagement in Research (PEER, 2011), run with the National Academies, and the Higher Education Solutions Network (2012), which funded development laboratories at seven universities.
2025: the end of USAID
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| 20 January 2025 | Executive order pausing US foreign development assistance for a 90-day review |
| Early 2025 | Stop-work orders and termination notices sent to many USAID partners, including universities |
| 10 March 2025 | Secretary of State Marco Rubio announces that about 83% of USAID programmes have been cancelled after the review |
| 1 July 2025 | USAID stops implementing foreign assistance; remaining programmes are administered by the Department of State |
For universities, the immediate effects were terminated awards, interrupted research and scholarships, and staff and students abroad left without funding. Some programmes were transferred to the State Department or continued with other funders; others closed. Public records of past awards remain available on ForeignAssistance.gov, and many evaluations and reports are archived in the Development Experience Clearinghouse. Because the situation continued to change through 2025 and 2026, readers should check the State Department and the institutions concerned for the current status of any specific programme.
What the history suggests
Three lessons recur across these seventy-five years. Institutions built to serve a real national need, and then funded by their own governments, have outlasted the projects that created them. Short contracts and shifting priorities, a complaint already made in 1964, weakened many partnerships. And people trained through these programmes, many of whom became university leaders, ministers and scientists, are often the most durable result. For how to judge a partnership on its merits, see how to evaluate a university partnership.
Sources
- National Archives, Morrill Act (1862); USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Cooperative Extension history.
- Truman Library, inaugural address, 20 January 1949.
- JFK Presidential Library, USAID and the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961.
- US Department of State, Office of the Historian: history.state.gov; foreign assistance announcements: state.gov.
- Fulbright Program: fulbrightprogram.org.
- USAID Development Experience Clearinghouse: dec.usaid.gov; spending data: ForeignAssistance.gov.
PartnershipsWhat university partnerships for development built
From India's first agricultural university to today's research networks: how cross-border university partnerships work, and what tends to last.
PartnershipsAgricultural university partnerships
Land-grant colleges abroad, Title XII consortia and Innovation Labs: why farming has been the heart of university partnerships.
PartnershipsHow to evaluate a university partnership
The six OECD criteria, a results chain, indicators that mean something and the traps that make partnership reports look better than they are.