ABSTRACT

This chapter describes the nature of the debate precipitated by the FY86 and FY87 budget messages. It explores the changes in the locus of decision-making within the federal government and within state governments with changes in extension's constituencies. The chapter analyses the evolution of technology transfer as a discrete programmatic activity of federal agencies, and its emergence as the primary lens through which extension has come to be viewed by Office of Management and Budget (OMB). It examines the various ways in which Cooperative Extension Service has described its mission, both at the national and state level and addresses the policy implications of the debates. The view depicted by OMB of extension as a technology transfer organization is indeed a cardinal element in self-description and self-assessment produced by cooperative extension. In the new policy environment extension has had to simultaneously seek to correct the narrow conceptualization of its missions and to demonstrate its effectiveness as a technology transfer system.