| The National Institute of Development Administration (NIDA), a public graduate institution in Thailand, was created in 1966 by the joint contract of the representatives of the Thai government, the Ford Foundation, and the Midwest University Consortium for International Activities (MUCIA). It offers teaching and training as well as research in the areas of development administration (business administration, public administration, development economics, and applied statistics) which directly relate to national development. The purpose of this study is to investigate the Ford Foundation's technical assistance to the Thai government, which was conducted through MUCIA, in order to aid in the establishment of the NIDA, and to analyze and evaluate the effects of this technical assistance on the NIDA's role and function in national development.;The method of investigation and analysis was historical. Based on the investigation of the documents of the NIDA, the Ford Foundation, the Indiana University Archives, the USAID, and Thailand's Department of Technical and Economic Cooperation, the findings can be summarized as follows: the human-resource development promoted through the Ford Foundation's technical assistance to the NIDA may have contributed to Thailand's economic growth, however, it also contributed to economic and cultural dependency. It may have contributed to greater dependency by causing the NIDA's educational system to be designed and directed according to the Western higher education patterns and academic disciplines. As a result, the NIDA teaching-learning process has been marked by a high degree of dependency upon American theories, methods, techniques of inquiry and teaching-learning materials. The curriculum and teaching-learning process, based on Western ideologies, theories, methodologies, and technology, tends to train NIDA students to share Western scholars' beliefs and ideas on national development and administration. |
