It is 1970 in a small village outside of Nairobi, Kenya where several Kennedy School of Government professors are travelling informally. A villager approaches Richard J. Zeckhauser '62, professor of Political Economy, to ask for help with a water flow problem: would Professor Zeckhauser know how to design a new system which would prevent the waste stream from contaminating the fresh water supply?

"I really regretted not being able to help him, but I knew nothing about that type of project," Zeckhauser recalls. The villager just didn't seem to understand that as an economic theorist who participated in several seminars at the University of Nairobi, Zeckhauser was only equipped to give academic, not technical, advice.

But it is easy to understand why the confusion occurred. At that point, Third World officials were more accustomed to receiving direct help than they were at being taught to help themselves. In the years since, however, the University's international assistance has taken a dramatic turn. Harvard has practically ceased its export of experts, and has now settled on a role more appropriate for an educational institution: to provide curricular advice to Third World universities.

This type of assistance actually started 30 years ago, when the Business School sent experts abroad to teach management techniques to try and stabilize the nascent economies of post-war France and Italy. But the bulk of the work in the ensuing era sought to change the world through more direct means.

The '60s were a time of unprecedented participation by American academia in policy-making, both in the war on poverty at home and in the development of similar programs in developing countries. Starting in 1962 when President Kennedy called upon the Business School to supervise the establishment of a business school for Central America in Nicaragua under the auspices of his Alliance for Progress program. Harvard played a leading role in aiding Third World nations. Most of this assistance came in the form of consulting services for specific projects, such as how to increase crop yield in a particular region. But by the end of the decade, disillusionment with the effectiveness of these programs began to grow.

Robert E. Klitgaard '68, a special assistant to President Bok who deals with international affairs, cites the situation of the Pakistani revolution of 1970 as an instance where planning by American social scientists was blamed for causing disaster. In 1958 several professors, including David Bell, associate professor of Business Administration, began to serve as development advisors, drawing up a national plan for Pakistan. When, at the end of a bloody revolution 12 years later. Bangladesh seceded from West Pakistan. Pakistani intellectuals blamed the national plan, criticizing it for emphasizing progress at the expense of equal distribution of resources among the eastern and western halves.

In addition to growing skeptical about the effectiveness of such programs, many developing countries have grown out of them. Dwight H. Perkins, director of the Harvard Institute for International Development (HIID), notes that "when a country reaches a level where it no longer needs such advice, it is no longer appropriate for Harvard to help." Perkins notes the difference between the stages of development between Asian and African countries. Asian nations have for the most part more of an established core of administrators than African nations, and therefore have less need for direct aid.

A final impetus for change has been the realization that Harvard itself could profit, both from the new case provided by developing nations and from constructive criticisms of the exported methods.

Klitgaard sums up Harvard's changing role: "In the '60s, the idea was that we had the magic and they had the needs. In the '80s, it's much more of a two-way street." He adds that now, whenever he goes abroad. "I always come back to this country with new materials."

So, in the past decade, other Harvard affiliates have followed the lead of the B-School, which has, in the past three decades, set up seven institutes of business management, taking the case study method to Turkey, the Philippines, India, Nicaragua and Iran.

The HIID and the K-School have set up curricula at universities in Indonesia. Philippines and Mexico. "Over the years, the emphasis of HIID has shifted from development advice to institution building." Perkins says, adding that "then our help

was more direct and issue if in more removed." Klitguard says that "His export of the '80s in the training to solve problem, rather than the solutions themselves.

The shift at Harvard apparently reflects a national trend of the `80s,the Agency for International Development (AID), the federal government's for foreign assistance, has grown with capital development projects--such is said, dam and hospital building. Instead, in his increasingly favored training programs in areas such as business management as well as grants that bring foreign students to the U.S. to study, says Walter A. Grady, an AID spokesman. "We've shied away from capital developments because we've learned the lesson that they don't really benefit the poor."

The extent to which Harvard's curriculum is shipped abroad differs from project to project. The Business School has peddled its case study method wholesale and has actively supported new institutions in Italy, Turkey, India and Nicaragua, while other professors prefer to operate as individuals, lending a favorite case or problem set to an already existing institution.

Others are called on to provide curricular advice, instead of cloning existing programs, such as the plan which a group of HIID faculty are drawing up at the request of the Aga Khan for his proposed Third World university. The length of the training program also varies--from the two-year business management programs the B-School set up in Barcelona, Spain, Nicaragua, and Iran, to two-week long curriculum consultations and seminars such as the one Klitgaard and his colleagues presented to a Mexican university of public administration in 1980.

In general, when providing curricular advice today. Harvard shrinks away from setting up new institutions--a common practice of the B-School in the '50s and '60s. The expense of setting up new institutions, coupled with the instability of some Third World countries, has prompted Harvard to opt for more temporary programs. The Nicaraguan Business School, built in 1962, turned into a hospital for several months during the early part of the revolution. The Iranian business school, open in 1972, closed in June 1980 by the decree of the Ayatollah Khomeini. These incidents make two-week seminars seem more appealing.