The University has agreed to co-sponsor Mexican students earning their doctoral degrees at Tufts with the Mexican National Council of Science and Technology (CONACYT).
President Bacow signed an agreement for the partnership in Mexico City last month, whereby CONACYT will pay accepted students' tuition for the first two years of their studies at Tufts.
Afterwards, Tufts will waive tuition for the completion of the students' doctoral study. Depending on the graduate program, a degree generally takes two to four years to complete.
According to Vice President of University Relations Mary Jeka, CONACYT will also pay for student fees and provide a stipend for the first three years of students' studies.
When the program begins next fall, Tufts will be "taking relatively small numbers of students [eight to 10] so we keep the program growing at a healthy but reasonable rate," according to Vice Provost Vincent Manno
In Mexico, "the education programs are very inexpensive; the problem is they lack enough facilities and teachers to accommodate all the students who are interested in higher education there," Jeka said.
This lack of resources has led CONACYT to seek partnerships with institutions abroad such as Harvard, Yale, and now Tufts.
CONACYT's agreement with Tufts came about as a result of the efforts of Tufts' International Board of Overseers, which coordinates networking efforts largely through international trips designed to "encourage more participation [from other nations], as well as networking for more visibility and financial assistance," Jeka said.
The deal was signed at a series of meetings that took place from Nov. 11 to Nov. 13 during the board's trip to Mexico, fulfilling one of its overarching goals, "to develop more financial aid opportunities for international students," according to Jeka.
"Virtually all of the [Mexican] students, particularly undergraduates, are paying for their own education," Jeka said. "One of the purposes of the International Board is to encourage investment by people in those countries to sponsor students, to set up scholarship programs, so some of these students who want to come to Tufts are able to do so."
Tufts hopes to extend the impact of the program beyond only graduate students. "Over the next several months we're going to be discussing faculty and scholar exchanges with CONACYT," Manno said.
"[The CONDACYT officials] loved the idea of the partnership because of the reputation that Tufts has built and is trying to strengthen in many of these countries," Jeka said. "That's something we would like to build on hopefully more in the future."
While Tufts currently has no other partnerships of this sort, Jeka said other countries like India and China expressed an interest setting up similar relationships.
