New Mexico, which was earlier known only as a popular tourist destination to many, is fast emerging as a big education capital as well. The universities and colleges of New Mexico are making their presence felt in both the national and international education circuit. There are more than a fifty colleges and universities in the small city of New Mexico. Some of the more prominent universities are namely, the University of Phoenix, DeVry University, and American Inter Continental University. The range of programs offered to students by these universities and colleges will leave you astounded. From technology to art, from business to health, you are sure to find a course of your choice here.

Most of these universities offer a very good financial aid to a few deserving students, mostly at the graduate level. There are special scholarships and fee wavers granted to deserving local students. This is probably done in an attempt to promote education at the local level and also decrease the number of college dropouts, at least those, which occur due to financial reasons.

Like all other universities and colleges in America, you need to acquire in the prescribed standardized examinations like SAT for the under graduate level and GRE for the graduate level, in order to gain admission in these colleges. The other application requirements can be easily found out from the web sites of individual universities. You can also mail your query to the application contact head or the concerned university. Contacting individual department unit heads is also particularly a good idea as at times a department may have application requirements different from those of the rest of the college.

Poverty tends to be inherited across generations because the poor cannot afford to educate their children and give them good health. To break this vicious circle, many countries have started to recognize the importance of investing massively in the education and health of the children of the rural poor. The Progresa program in Mexico has been a pioneering initiative of this type. At the cost of US$1Billion/year, poor mothers in 2.1 million families are paid to send their children to school. We are participating to the evaluation of the impact of Progresa on educational achievements. Results obtained to this date show that transfers to the poor have helped the children of the poor reach educational attainments equal to those of the non-poor. The program has its greatest impact on children from the poorest households and located further away from schools. However, we also show that identical results could have been reached at a much lower cost through targeting on children at risk of not going to school instead of children in poor households. Making assistance programs more efficient is key if limited foreign aid funds are to make more of a difference on low educational levels among the rural poor.

In the second phase of this project, we are investigating a decentralized cash transfer program, Bolsa Escola, in Brazil. In this case, the municipalities recommend to the Federal government which children are to be awarded cash transfers conditional on school attendance. Forces of the local political economy are thus important in the selection of beneficiaries. We use this to analyze the political forces at play at the local level in selecting the beneficiaries of a federal program.

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