Constructing a “Scientific Manpower Crisis”: Science Education and the Ford Foundation in Cold War Turkey

Abstract

In the early 1960s, the Ford Foundation funded numerous projects in Turkey, primarily concerning science education and science policy. Related to the post-Sputnik debates on “scientific manpower needs,” and modernisation theory’s emphasis on “industrialising elites” in the developing world, these projects were the products of an intellectual bandwagon comprising scientists and experts commonly working with transnational organisations like the OECD and UNESCO. Characterising the need in terms influenced by this trend, the Ford Foundation’s representative in Turkey proposed establishing a special high school for students gifted in the sciences. Analysing the process of the establishment of this school, this article explores how Turkish scientists connected to the same networks participated in the Foundation’s initiatives to advance their status, and examines the broad political and economic factors that the Foundation’s “non-ideological” interest in education for scientific manpower overlooked, leading to the mixed results of the project.