The Fulbright-Philippine Agriculture Scholarship Program: Capacity Building for Institutional Impacts in the Philippine Agricultural Sector

From 1999 to 2006, the Fulbright-Philippine Agriculture Scholarship Program (FPASP) awarded grants to 143 Filipino scholars for them to pursue graduate studies or conduct research in the United States. Its goal was to develop human resource capacity for the Philippine agricultural and fisheries sectors. While there have been studies on the impact of foreign program–assisted scholarships, focusing on personal and professional impacts, we expanded the framework by looking at institutional impacts. This study surveyed 88 former scholars and conducted 4 focus group discussions and 4 key informant interviews with institutional administrators in order to describe the contributions of these scholars and document the impact of the FPASP on institutional capacity building for the Philippine agricultural sector. Results show that the FPASP scholars contributed to the enhancement of research, teaching, extension, regulatory, and management capacities in their respective institutions. However, factors such as lack of facilities, resources, support staff, and funds, as well as the heavy workloads, restricted the scholars’ institutional impact. It is recommended that a similar agriculture-specific graduate scholarship program be launched.