New Perspectives on Extension Education

University extension services, often referred to as the third arm of the university, have been conceived of as a strategy for drawing universities to help with the country’s efforts at development and thus enlarging their scope from the limited function of teaching or conducting research to the larger task of serving the needs of society. While the delegation of this new responsibility to universities constitutes the core of extension, the assumption is that universities also stand to gain. In fact, it is firmly believed that by taking students, teachers, researchers and even university administrators out of the ivory towers of academe, and providing for their dynamic interaction with reality, extension work enriches teaching, learning and research. University extension services have been employed for several purposes—notably, for the promotion of modern and scientific practices in agriculture; for the cultivation of social consciousness regarding preventive health measures and for the promotion of health care; for spreading awareness of the population problem and for the dissemination of the knowledge regarding measures for population control; for the achievement of adult education; and most recently, for the successful implementation of the country’s literacy mission. Extension being essentially relational in character, touches some of the core issues regarding the structural context of innovations.