MNA: This is an unprecedented initiative on the part of the Mexican government, that was launched in 2013, by President Peña Nieto and President Obama, and the rationale is if Mexico is the third economic partner to the US, we are to be the third educational partner. The number one partner in terms of education is China, they mobilise close to 300,000 students, faculty, teachers to the US – that gives you an idea of the strategy that China has in terms of internationalisation worldwide. The second place is held by India, and the third place is held by Korea.

“The rationale is if Mexico is the third economic partner to the US, we are to be the third educational partner”

The thing is that Korea has half the population that Mexico has and they send 65-75,000 students each year just to the US, so that was our target. We want to be in the third position, we want to be mobilising 100,000, so that’s where the name comes from.

The PIE: When did you decide to add the target to send 10,000 students to Canada?

MNA: We initiated with the US but thinking that it would be complemented later on with Canada, because we envisage this as the North American region which, encompassing all three countries, trade more than all of the European nations together and all of the Latin American countries together – so that gives you an idea of the size of our commerce and trade partnership in this region. So I think and as a representative of my government, that we ought to be doing more interesting things and in a larger volume, in terms of education, research and innovation.

The PIE: Are you targeting particular students?

MNA: We designed this strategy to mobilise students from very socially and economically deprived backgrounds. They are the poorest of the poor in Mexico, and they come from technological universities primarily. A scholarship fund was established by the Ministry of Education, so we launched a call last year to all the public higher education institutions in the country, and when I say all it’s all, within the 32 states in Mexico. We had a prioritisation criteria and academic criteria in order to select these students, so we were able to fund 7,500 students, and they travelled to all 50 states in the States.

“We designed this strategy to mobilise students from very socially and economically deprived backgrounds. They are the poorest of the poor in Mexico”

So it is not just a project of numbers but of getting our societies to meet, of getting to know each other better, of understanding who we are, as although we are neighbours, we have a lot of stigma about our societies at both ends. I think that the earlier you get these students and teachers to meet with our counterparts, it is better. The rest of the numbers are added by different strategies in the country, finance coming from their own higher education institutions, or from the state governments, the municipalities or the private sector.

The PIE: How many students have gone abroad through the programme so far?

MNA: Last year the target for mobility was 27,000 and we ended the year with 30,900, so we accomplished the first challenge we had. The challenge this year is mobilising 46,000; as of September I think that we had 30,100. Just between August of last year and September of this year, we have mobilised over 60,000 students, faculty, teachers to the US, so in addition we decided to implement a similar strategy with Canada and the numbers there are 10,000.

Canada started this year and because of financial restrictions worldwide, it hit us too in Mexico so we got a much restricted budget this year, but for Canada we were able to mobilise close to 300 students at the beginning of the year. They come to all the provinces too, from all the states in Mexico. Just to give you an idea, for 300 spots that we had in this scholarship programme, we got 24,000 applications. That’s the size of the aspirations that we have raised in the country and of the interest that exists to travel to Canada and to the US.

The PIE: What motivates students to come to Canada and the US?

MNA: Well they see this as an opportunity to continue with graduate studies afterwards, because it is a big challenge for us that our students do not speak English so they cannot apply for scholarships because they don’t pass the GRE, the GMAT, the SAT score exams. So they see this as the opportunity to be trained in English in order to follow up later on and to have the experience.

“For many, many of these students this is the first time they will leave their towns and they will be on a plane, so it impacts the individual at every level”

For many, many of these students this is the first time they will leave their towns and they will be on a plane, this is the first experience, so it impacts the individual at every level, at a personal, at an academic, as an opportunity to continue. They develop this special bond with these institutions because it is their first experience, meeting these professors and attending this university, so it is just a great programme.

The PIE: Is it all higher education?

MNA: Yes

The PIE: How much funding has the government put into it?

MNA: Well, it depends. Last year the funding allowed for 7,500 full scholarships, the student doesn’t pay anything. We pay for air transportation, a monthly stipend, for the university fees. This year it was much lower, so we were able to send 1,500 only.

We also had new ministers in government and we had state government elections in the middle of the year, so this was a challenge for us. We are working with the new people who came into office, designing and defining what the funding will be next year and the following. What we want is an established fund that will be committed per year, so we don’t have to negotiate anymore, so we will know beforehand that we will be allowed to mobilise – I don’t know the numbers, but let’s say 10,000 each year.

The PIE: How many students go abroad from Mexico every year to study?

MNA: To the US, it was about 14,000 in 2013. They go everywhere. Outside the US, Spain, France and Germany are the most popular destinations, followed by the UK and Canada. In total, it was just over 27,000 that year.

The PIE: You said at the CBIE conference you’re not so concerned about outbound movement being matched by students coming into Mexico from, say, the US at this stage.

“I will not expect people from Harvard to be interested in travelling to Mexico to learn unless they are interested in social sciences, in the strengths we have”

MNA: That was quite a statement. Of course we’re interested in receiving students, but that cannot stop me as government doing what we do, because I cannot expect 100,000 Americans to go to Mexico in this administration. That’s just impossible. But I do have the interest, as government, to mobilise 100,000 students to the US, because we have different needs, very different needs. This is an English speaking country, number one, this country has the best universities in the world.

I have to be honest, I will not expect people from Harvard or Yale or Stanford to be interested in travelling to Mexico to learn unless they are interested in social sciences, in the strengths we have – archeology, history, anthropology, many many other fields of knowledge – but I would be delirious to believe that people will move from these top-notch universities to my country. We have researchers from everywhere working in many of our institutions but not in the numbers that I need to send abroad.

The PIE: You’ve also said a lot of study abroad programmes are very elitist; what else is the government doing to increase access for people from different levels of society?

MNA: We think it is an issue of public policy. A few weeks ago, the government established compulsory English in all of the public elementary schools in Mexico from next year. It is very new, we have a new Minister of Education, so that was one of the highlights of his coming into office. I think that is a very important initiative, because we have to start somehow.

The PIE: Will compulsory English language be rolled out to secondary level later on?

MNA: I think this will eventually elevate to secondary and tertiary but we have to start with primary. We have to train teachers too because our English teachers in public schools in Mexico teach in Spanish, so we have to do a lot of things, but we have to start somehow.

The PIE: Is English a new focus for the Mexican government?

“There will always be people willing to go abroad, and if you get a better opportunity outside, how can you stop them?”

MNA: Yes, but I think it is a presidential initiative more than just the Minister of Education, this has to do with President Peña Nieto’s view of what needs to be done in terms of education, research and innovation in Mexico. So these are different approaches to the challenge we have.

The PIE: Are you concerned about brain drain?

MNA: I’m not. I think it has to do with competitiveness and liberty of movement, and I think that in any strategic planning at the government or at the institutional level, this risk has to be considered. There will always be people willing to go abroad, and if you get a better opportunity outside, how can you stop them? So that only gives our countries the vision of having to plan differently and having to enact policies to then attract these people to come back.

In my own experience, with myself, my husband, my children, having been trained in the best schools abroad and having lived abroad for many years, we came back because at the end it is our country, it’s our family, it’s our friends, it’s our culture, it’s our lives.