Coombs Says Chaos Hurts Education Effort In Developing Lands

"A lack of strategy or coherent body of principles" guiding American educational aid to developing countries has led to "misfiring and waste" in many programs, Philip H. Coombs, Director of UNESCO'S International Institute for Educational Planing, said last night.

Delivering the eighth Burton Lecture, Coombs decried "fragmentation" in America's "vast sprawling public and private" aid effort. He said that aid, whether in the form of grants from the government or exchange programs arranged by universities, must be directed at the "fundamental problems" of the underdeveloped nations.

Aid should aim at securing "far-reaching internal reforms" in the educational structure of the country, and must be "integrated with social and economic planning." Coombs declared.

"The United States," he charged, "is at present III-equipped by experience and practice to provide this type of assistance."