The greatest obstacles to developing countries providing high-quality university education center on funding, curriculum, and retention.

• University education is expensive and can heavily burden developing governments, especially those of the poorer nations of the world.1 Yet, an educated population is a key factor in leading a country out of poverty and into economic productivity.

  One size does not fit all in higher education for developing worlds. Much of western policy, science, and technology offers little discourse and instruction on the majority of the world’s environmental, population, and security issues, and needs. 2 

• Many educated citizens of the developing world chose to pursue higher education and their careers in developed world. While these scholars have the opportunity to contribute to their discipline and benefit from fully developed economic and political systems for themselves and their children, their absence is often to the detriment of their home nations which would benefit from their expertise and experience.

At present, there are many educated scholars in the developed world who, with proper institutional support, could make a valuable contribution to education in poorer countries.

• IPP’s goal is to send professors and instructors from the developed to the developing world and within the developing world to other developing-country universities.  As a part of this process, IPP assigns young International Instructors to universities in their homelands. Additionally, at least 20% of the International Professors, Instructors, and Fellows will be drawn from the pool of unemployed and underemployed Ph.D.’s from developing countries. 3

• IPP aims to support and supplement the salaries of scholars who live and teach in the developing world.  By helping to mitigate the financial barriers, the Project helps to provide a more stable and enduring platform for the work of internationalizing higher education.

• IPP encourages broad circulation of opinion, information, theory, and research with differing perspectives. We help to enable developing world universities to more confidently and freely set forth their own regional and countries' higher education ideas, approaches, and values. The work of IPP is informed and framed by collaboration with regional participants, individuals whose intimate knowledge of political, cultural, and social issues/needs is integral to the internationalization of higher education process.

IPP offers a central location for sharing and disseminating data and completed research across the developed and developed world. 

Both the developed and the developing world stand to benefit from a network that offers opportunities for intellectual and academic exchange and collaboration within the context of university education.

1. For example the World Bank recently approved a loan of 200 million dollars to Columbia to enhance its higher education system which presently can only cover the needs of 21% of graduating secondary students. Substantial Loan Will Aid Colombians, Michael Easterbrook, Chronicle of Higher Education 2003

2. "Two-thirds of humankind lives in developing countries, and most of the world’s worst deprivation is located there. Study of these societies is therefore of central importance to any enquiry into the human condition. Population is critical for many reasons, as in its relationships to health, migration, environment, youth, education, aging, gender, productivity, retirement income, old-age support, employment opportunity, male-female ratios, family support systems, to name a significant fraction of the intersections of population with other variables and phenomena."OECD 2005

3. International Instructors began to be added to our faculty in March 2005. They are to receive stipends to augment their modest salaries. In general, the Project's aim is to further the development of these young people as internationally-minded academics. OECD 2007