Creating an ecosystem of HE collaboration across the border

“There is no border for talent.”

– Fernando Leon Garcia, president of CETYS Universidad

The fence that divides the Mexican state of Baja California from California in the United States runs down the beach at Playas de Tijuana and then a few hundred metres into the Pacific Ocean.

Constructed from 10-metre-high steel slats, some topped with concertina wire, the fence is an apt metaphor for how the administration of President Donald J Trump conceives of the phenomenology of American-Mexican relations.

You can look at the wide, well-maintained highways, shiny distribution centres and mile upon mile of beautiful suburban homes and lawns.

But, even if you hold American citizenship, as do hundreds of students from CETYS Universidad (and tens of thousands of residents of CaliBaja), the fence loudly proclaims that the USA doesn’t want you; you will be let in on sufferance.

Twenty kilometres to the east is the Otay Mesa border crossing, traversed by thousands of students from Tijuana, including several hundred from CETYS (Centro de Enseñanza Técnica y Superior) who are taking courses at San Diego State University (SDSU), the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), Southwest Community College (SCC) or several other institutions in the area.

There, on a good day, crossing from Mexico takes about 15 minutes.

“But sometimes the crossing can take three or four hours,” Rafael Fernández de Castro, who is director of UCSD’s Center for US-Mexican Studies and who holds the Aaron Feldman Family Chancellor’s Endowed Chair at the university, told University World News.
 

This article is published by University World News in partnership with the International Association of University Presidents. University World News is solely responsible for the editorial content.

“If you have class at 8am at UCSD, you might have to wake up at three in the morning, come to the border, spend hours waiting and then drive to the campus in La Jolla, more than half an hour away in good traffic,” he said.

Yet, pushed by the realities of the CaliBaja region, it’s seven million people, generating US$250 billion per year, thereby ranking the region as one of the world’s 10 largest economies, the eight universities in the region – four in Mexico and four in the US – came together last December to form the CaliBaja Higher Education Consortium (CHEC).

According to SDSU’s press release announcing the creation of the consortium: “CHEC seeks to institutionalise transborder academic collaboration in one of the most interconnected border zones in the world, stretching from San Diego and Tijuana in the west to Calexico [in the US] and Mexicali in the east”; a desert city, Mexicali is home to CETYS’ main campus.

“I have been at SDSU for eight years and seen the profound need and opportunity for cross-border collaborations. With this consortium, we are planting the seeds for partnership that can unleash the region’s vast potential as a binational powerhouse, and where – together – we generate solutions to the region’s greatest challenges,” said Adela de la Torre, president of SDSU.

UCSD’s Chancellor, Pradeep Khosla, said: “As I think about society for the next 20 or 30 years, the most important thing a university can do is find a way to reduce poverty in our society and increase equitable wealth generation and distribution. So I can imagine this consortium could become a primary driver of wealth generation, both for Mexico and the US.”

Government’s ‘regulatory issues’

Neither the Mexican university presidents, nor their American partners, can avoid the “regulatory issues” stemming from their national governments, CETYS’ President Fernando Leon Garcia explained, when I interviewed him in Mexicali during CETYS’s 65th anniversary events in late September.

Chief among such issues are visa regulations, searches at the border, tuition rates, internship opportunities and accreditation requirements. “These are some of the mundane realities we have to overcome,” said Leon Garcia.

The universities and colleges in the CaliBaja region have, however, taken advantage of the geographical distance from their national capitals.

“In San Diego, we’re very far away [5,000 kilometres] from our capital in Washington DC, and Tijuana is very far from [3,000 kilometres] Mexico City, so we’re creating here something very different,” explained Rafael Fernández de Castro when interviewed last month in Mexicali at a conference in honour of CETYS’s 65th anniversary.

“We’re creating CaliBaja, this regional zone of integration. We believe that universities should prepare the talent that we’re going to need in the future. San Diego has become a key hub for biotech, life sciences, and they are booming thanks to talent from Tijuana and Mexicali.

“So we’re taking agency for ourselves. We’re not waiting for the capitals to help us. We’ve created CHEC,” said Fernández de Castro.

‘There is no border for talent’

Neither Washington nor Mexico City has a good sense of what needs to be supported here, said Leon Garcia. “So, acknowledging that, the locals are getting to action.”

Each institution has an “interest for dialogue, to collaborate, and to make sure both are engaged in developing talent” because “there is no border for talent”.

The needs of “multinational industries are the same; what is required in Mexico is required in the US. That is why CETYS works closely with industries such as PACCAR Kenworth [which manufactures heavy-duty trucks] to prepare industry-ready talent with the relevant skills and professional mindset”, said Leon Garcia.

Living in a binational space

When residents of Tijuana speak about living in a binational space, they are not being hyperbolic, explained Carlos H Garcia Alvarado, vice-president of institutional relations of CETYS, whose responsibilities include managing relations with American border authorities.

Neither government understands the daily lives of people on the border, he said before pointing to himself: “I was taught to carry my visa in my back pocket since I was 12 – and that I had to take care of it, guard it with my life because we would cross the border as children every day to go to school on the US side. My mom would just drop us off, and there you go,” he stated.

(Today approximately 7,000 primary and secondary students who live in and around Tijuana, go to school in the US.)

The reality of being a Tijuanense is, he explained, “cross[ing] into Chula Vista [a 20-minute drive north of the border] to go to the bank or the ATM or pick up my mail”– and having to do these errands fast because he has a meeting back at CETYS’ Tijuana campus in three hours.

“If you haven’t lived this, you do not understand. It just goes over your head, and that is what happens at the federal level in Mexico and in the US,” said Garcia Alvarado. Democratic and Republican administrations before Trump also did not understand this reality – or the impact of the border delays on the 350 Americans who cross the border to study in Tijuana.

“Of course,” he added, “Trump hasn’t helped because his rhetoric has led to more scrutiny, to being more invasive at times.”

Working with officials at SDSU, UCSD and SWCC, US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) instituted a pilot project this past April designed to expedite crossing the border.

Called the Coordinated Access Program (CAP), the initiative establishes a dedicated lane for the hundreds of students crossing on foot who travel daily from Tijuana to SWCC; CETYS students in the 2+2 programme – the first two years at SWCC leading to an associate’s degree and the second two years at CETYS leading to a BA – are eligible for the programme.

According to Uniradiobaja.com: “Among the requirements, participants must have valid immigration documentation, an active student ID, and an official letter verifying enrolment. They must also register beforehand through the CBP mobile app.”

SWCCD’s CAP Bulletin for the fall 2026 semester gave much more information, including what immigration categories were eligible to participate in the programme: for example, US citizens living in Mexico, permanent US citizens living in Mexico and holders of F1 student visas (the most common form of student visas).

The bulletin also listed the ways of applying for the visa and provided a sketch of the pedestrian border crossing (used by this author to reach San Diego from where he would fly home to Ottawa, in Ontario, Canada after attending the events at CETYS.)

Another programme available to Mexican students is the SENTRI (Secure Electronic Network for Travellers Rapid Inspection), which is also available for other Mexicans.

This programme requires being fingerprinted, interviewed and costs US$225 per year. Unlike the CAP, SENTRI provides access to dedicated car lanes. (I crossed the border at around 4pm on Tuesday 22 September; at that time the SENTRI line was over an hour.)

US federal student aid can be used in Mexico

As part running joint programmes with American universities, CETYS sought and received accreditation by both the Western Association of Schools and Collages’ Senior College and University Commission (WSCUC); its business programmes are accredited by the Accreditation Council of Business Schools and Programs and its engineering programmes are accredited by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology.

However, US federal law is silent about the border, stating only that recipients of federal aid through the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) system can use these funds only at accredited institutions. This lacuna has allowed thousands of American students to cross the border in the other direction for their education.

According to Garcia Alvarado, “about 350 American students commute from San Diego to Tijuana every day” in what he characterises as a “win-win” situation.

“They’re able to come to a US-accredited institution that provides a good quality education that is recognised in the US.”

Since tuition is significantly lower at CETYS than in the US (and the dollar is a stronger currency than the peso) US federal student aid covers a substantial amount of the tuition, whereas that money in the US would only go about a third of the way toward paying their tuition.

Recently, however, the Americans have tapped the breaks on this cross-border education. “Federal student aid has now placed a restriction,” explained Garcia Alvarado.

“They do not allow their federal student aid to be used in any programme that has an online component, and some of our programmes, because of educational innovation, have online components because we want students to be able to work remotely and so on.”

This restriction will, Garcia Alvarado told University World News, mean that FAFSA-funded Americans will not be eligible to enrol in the university’s newest programmes because of their on-line component.

Mexican students pay in-state tuition

CETYS’ commitment to both developing such programmes and retaining their American international students is equal: “We’re not going back. We’re looking at alternatives, including providing some funding of our own or a proprietary loan system, so that they can continue to study with us.”

‘Game changer’ for Mexican students

Irrespective of CETYS’ American accreditations and the fact that FAFSA-funded students can attend the university in Mexico, California does not allow students to use state financial aid to study outside the country. Until recently, Mexican students wishing to study in California had to pay out-of-state tuition, which froze most of these students out.

Cue David Alvarez Castro, California State Assembly Member for Chula Vista, about 30 km north of Tijuana, one of the founding board members of CHEC, who in 2024 sponsored a bill (that became law) that mandated that Mexicans attending community colleges could be charged the same tuition as in-state students.

According to Alvarez Castro, this has been “a game changer” for Mexican students who want, ultimately, a degree from UCSD. “We are one of the most competitive universities to get into. We receive close to 160,000 applications every year.

“But,” he said, “if you go to a community college and do well in your two years there, you could transfer to UCSD” or to SDSU.

‘Integration 2.0’

Fernández de Castro refers to projects like this and the CHEC as “integration 2.0”; integration 1.0 was the establishment of assembly plants by major corporations like Toyota in Tijuana.

Fernández de Castro continued, that now, notwithstanding national politics and immigration laws, “a lot of the people in San Diego and in Southern California understand that having Baja California as a neighbour is a blessing.

“Now the US firms are not only hiring unskilled workers in Mexico in the maquiladoras’ assembly lines. Now they are hiring a lot of engineers”;

Mexican universities graduate almost 200,000 engineers per year, while American universities graduate about 141,000, despite the US having a population almost three times Mexico’s population of 133 million and a significantly larger student base.

STEM is very hot in Mexico, Fernández de Castro told University World News. A lot of US-based firms like Thermo Fisher, whose headquarters is in Carlsbad, northern San Diego, hire a lot of engineers here; digitalisation means that some of them will remain in Tijuana and work for US companies.

“There’s an integration of talent and the region knows that if we’re going to do as well as we expect, and if we’re going to fulfil the potential of our region, we have not only to get the US students ready, but also the Mexican students ready. So the workforce is bi-national,” said Fernández de Castro.

Facilitating internships and partnerships

Central to CETYS’ efforts to provide an international technical education are internships with companies in the CaliBaja region; the campus in Tijuana is situated near a number of high-tech companies, including Foxconn, which facilitated internships and other partnerships.

Dr Nataly Medina, CETYS’ Program Chair for Computer Engineering, explained the role of internships for engineering students.

“We must increase the talent pipeline, and, so, students must be exposed to applied learning. They need to work on solving real-world problems that industry has.” At present, there are approximately 250 students on internships; before graduating, each student must have one internship semester.

To do this, part of her job is outreach to industry in Mexico and the US border area. She starts by sending emails that, if there is interest, are followed up by site visits. These are followed by invitations to visit CETYS to give lectures or to conduct workshops so that the companies become familiar with the university and its students.

Among the companies she has worked with to establish internships is the telecommunications giant Qualcomm, which was interested in partnering with a Mexican institution.

While CETYS’ cyber curriculum is not dictated by Qualcomm or other companies, such as Adventus or NVIDIA, at which its students have internships, Medina is in constant communication with its industry partners about what their needs are.

“We’re not working alone. We’re working together [with the companies] as a team. We do this through advisory groups that provide feedback on how to make changes to the curriculum,” she explained. Another source of feedback is returning students.

“A few years ago, the whole programme went to Korea. When they came back home, they told me: ‘Oh, we need to work on this lot.’ They told me they realised the effort that they need to do in order to have success in this field, said Medina.

Before we finished, our discussion turned to a unique aspect of CETYS’ education, its emphasis on humanism and ethical teachings. This is not an add-on to the curriculum, Medina explained.

“The humanities courses are meant to inform their technical products, both on campus and in internships. Questions like ‘Why am I choosing to study electronics? Why am I studying semi-conductors?’ are important because the students need to plan what they’re going to do next and what’s the purpose of life?” said Medina.

CETYS wants its students to ask: “What do I need to do with technology, and how is it transforming job opportunities, for instance. What are the ethical ways that we are going to do this? As an engineer, what do we need to do with technology to accord with health and the environment?

“They need to plan the whole project as a human being,” Medina told University World News. “And consider the definition of human being. Why are you here, and what’s the purpose of life, and why are you studying engineering, for instance?”

As noted, among the examples of international companies that have hoovered up CETYS’ graduates is PACCAR Kenworth.

“If you go to their headquarters in Bellevue or main operations in Everett, Washington, you will find a growing number of engineers and senior leaders, including the current vice-president and CIO, are graduates of CETYS. How did this happen?

“Their largest manufacturing plant is in Mexicali. Through our internship programme, a number of our students became interns at the plant.

“Then, they were hired and started working their way up the ladder. And because they are very good, the corporate unit pulled them to the States. I think that speaks about the trajectory of our students,” said Garcia Alvarado.