"While the negative effects of this decline in university funding on the training of students can hardly be disputed, the consequences for the academic progress of university teachers were somewhat mooted by the establishment of a twinning relationship in 1988 between the University of Ibadan and the University of Iowa in the United States. This relationship could, in a sense, be seen as deriving from the earlier Visiting Professorship programme of the Department since it was initially set in motion through the good offices of Professor Michael McNulty and involved not only the Departments of Geography in both institutions.............One immediate consequence of this development is the capacity of the Department, in spite of the general decline within the university, to offer in 1995 a new Master's degree programme in Geographical Information Systems (GIS). This has been made possible through the provision in the scheme of the hardware and software to establish the course in the Department and the training some members had in Iowa State University and the University of Iowa."  (pp. 16-17)