Its people are Southeast Asia’s most potent force for progress. Hence, agricultural human resource development has been SEARCA’s primary goal since its establishment.

SEARCA is one of the "centers of excellence" established by SEAMEO. As such, SEARCA assists SEAMEO member countries in producing highly trained human resources in agriculture and related sciences to accelerate agricultural and rural development in Southeast Asia.

Two of SEARCA's activities that carry out this mandate are the Graduate Study Program and the University Consortium. Both activities are handled by the Graduate Scholarship Department (GSD).