Starting this fall, low-income Mexican students who live within 45 miles away from California's south border qualify for discounted in-state tuition at nine community colleges in San Diego and Imperial counties.
"It's been more accessible, and more adaptable to my income, it's been life changing," Melany Garcia told Border Report. She is one of the program's participants in the pilot program, which will run for the next 5 years.
"Being here in the United States is opening more doors than studying in Mexico."
Melany and her binational peers have access to this opportunity thanks to Assembly Bill 91, signed into law by California Governor Gavin Newsom last year. The bill, authored by Assemblyman David Alvarez, cleared the path for U.S. and Mexican citizens with a Visa to attend the schools north of the border, a move that is meant to fuel the future workforce of the San Diego Region.
Qualifying students would pay the in-state rate $46 per unit, versus the average $300 nonresident tuition fee per unit.
"We have a very unique, special situation where we can attract students not just from other parts of California and within San Diego, but also from across the border in our border region," Alvarez told inewsource last year. "(They) are really our regional assets."
The San Diego region needs to ramp up post-secondary educational attainment if it wants to meet its 2030 goal of adding 20,000 skilled workers per year to support the local economy's growth, according to a 2023 report by the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation.
The report highlights that "investing in Latino and Black student success would reverse the talent shortage trend and create a talent surplus," and this program would fuel that by trimming financial barriers faced by the cross-border students.
Each one of the 9 participating community colleges limits the program's participation to 150 students, meaning up to 1,350 students could benefit from this initiative per year.
"Our community values education, and as an educational institution we simply need to remove the barriers for our students by removing the cost to attend college, and that's what we've done," said Southwestern Community College President, Mark Sanchez. The Chula Vista, California, school has approximately 80 students enrolled this semester as part of the AB-91 program.
"It allows us to ensure that we can educate and prepare the broadest talent pool for those job opportunities now and into the future," he added.
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