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, 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 economics 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 was a time of unprecedented participation of American academics in policy-making, both in the war on poverty at home and in setting up 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 has played a leading role in aiding Third World nations. Most of this assistance came in the form of counsulting services for specific projects, such as how to increase crop yield in a particular region.

But by the end of the decade a growing disillusionment with the effectiveness of these programs took the place of the ideal that throwing money at a problem could make a difference.

Robert E. Klitgaard, '68, 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 seconded 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 of a 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 while the B-School has, in the past three decades, set up seven institutes of business management which have taken the case study method to Turkey, the Philippines, India, Nicarauga and Iran, other Harvard affiliates have in the past decade followed suit.

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 now it is more removed." Klitgaard says that "the export of the '80s is the training to solve problems, rather than the solutions themselves."

The shift at Harvard apparently reflects a national trend. Since the 60s, the Agency for International Development (AID), the federal government's main channel for foreign assistance, has grown dissatisfied with captial development projects--such as road, dam and hospital building. Instead, it has 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 development 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 closing existing programs, such as the plans 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 programs 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.