Reforming Higher Education in a Society at War: Wisconsin State University-Stevens Point's Advisory Mission in South Vietnam, 1967-1974

Abstract

This study explores an important but little known facet of America’s war in Vietnam: the United States effort to reform the South Vietnamese system of higher education as part of the broader “nation-building” process in the fledgling Republic of Vietnam (RVN). Specifically, it examines the interaction between Wisconsin State University-Stevens Point (WSU-SP) now the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and the Government of South Viet Nam (GVN), to implement educational change.1 In 1966, USAID recruited President James H. Albertson of WSU-SP to head a group of educators, the original “Wisconsin Team,” to survey and report on colleges and universities in the RVN. Albertson and other members of the Wisconsin Team were killed in a plane crash near Da Nang in March 1967. Other WSU-SP personnel completed the survey, and later that year the university signed a contract umbrella with USAID and the South Vietnamese government to continue the collaboration. This contractual agreement launched a six-year program by which WSU-SP was the principal institutional adviser to the South Vietnamese system of higher education. Over time, some fifty different consultants worked under the banner of the Wisconsin Team, producing thirty-eight major reports and surveys.