NMSU and UTEP explain why Mexican students get tuition discount

Earlier this week, the NMSU Board of Regents voted to approve a tuition discount for Mexican students at New Mexico State University.

Many ABC-7 viewers questioned why the same tuition discount wasn’t offered to American students from other states.

Tuesday’s resolution states students from Mexico will pay 1.5 percent more than New Mexico students starting this fall. The tuition rate for qualifying Mexican students will be about half the rate for out-of-state students, about $4,600 a semester for full-time students.

ABC-7’s New Mexico Mobile Newsroom spoke with Dan Howard, the Vice President and Provost at NMSU. We learned American students from 13 western U.S. states are part of the “Western Undergraduate Exchange Program,” which gives residents of those states the same discount Mexican students will receive.

The states and territories that participate in the program with NMSU are Arizona, California, Colorado, the Northern Mariana Islands, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming.

If the state is not part of the program, a student from that state would pay about $10,000. Howard said NMSU hopes to offer the same discounted tuition rate to students from every U.S. State. The proposal is being discussed.

“We’ve had students come to New Mexico State University from Mexico for many years,” said Howard, “That pipeline dried up a little bit as result of some of the drug problems in Mexico. We’re trying to reopen that pipeline.”

Las Cruces is near the border with Mexico and already attracts many students from the country. The university is also recruiting students from the northern Mexican states of Chihuahua and Sonora. Howard said NMSU is considering things they haven’t considered in the past due to the declining population of the state of New Mexico.

“As a Hispanic-serving institution, this is natural for us with a student population, where many of our students speak Spanish, where many of our faculty speaks Spanish,” Howard said.

“They are going to go back to their communities, they are going to be economic drivers for their communities. They are economic drivers for Mexico and Mexico’s economy improves, New Mexico’s improves,” Howard said.

The University of Texas at El Paso has a similar program for Mexican students: “El Programa de Asistencia Estudiantil” or PASE.

PASE allows qualified Mexican citizens and permanent residents the opportunity to pay tuition at the Texas resident rate for undergraduate and graduate studies.

University officials said that in order to qualify, Mexican students must demonstrate financial need, meet admission requirements and maintain academic standing. The program was approved by the Texas Legislature in 1987.

Other public universities in the state have similar programs.

The average in-state tuition cost for an undergraduate resident student taking 15 semester credit hours is $3,673.75, UTEP officials said. The average non-resident tuition is $10,211 for 15 hours.

In a statement emailed to ABC-7, UTEP stated, “We are glad to be among the universities in Texas that have such a program that helps increase educational opportunities for students from Mexico.”