Sec. Rice At US-Chile Scholarship Signing Ceremony

Secretary Condoleezza Rice
Treaty Room
Washington, DC
August 8, 2007
11:17 a.m. EDT

Remarks with Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings and Chilean Foreign Minister Alejandro Foxley At the Signing Ceremony for U.S.-Chile Equal Opportunity Scholarship Program

MODERATOR: Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; His Excellency, the Foreign Minister of Chile, Alejandro Foxley; and our Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings.

SECRETARY RICE: Good morning. Good morning, Minister. I know that the Chilean Ambassador is here. Members of the distinguished Chilean delegation, I welcome you all on this very special day for U.S.-Chilean partnership. We gather to celebrate an historic higher education exchange between our two nations. And in that regard Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, who is joining us, thank you for being here to launch this important initiative.

Secretary Spellings -- Margaret -- is soon going to lead a delegation of American university presidents to Chile, and I look forward to getting a report on that trip, Margaret. I'd also like to recognize that Deputy Secretary John Negroponte, Assistant Secretary Tom Shannon and Claudia McMurray and a number of others who have done so much to foster this partnership, including Deputy Assistant Secretary Tom Farrell, who was sort of the point person on this, are all here. And to the Fulbright students from South America and our Fulbright partners, thank you for joining us.

Education is the single greatest force for equality and social justice in the world. So last year, when my friend, Foreign Minister Foxley, proposed an idea for a new education partnership between our countries, I was really eager to listen. The idea was simple: give some talented and deserving Chilean students who lack English language skills the opportunity to study in U.S. universities.

And so today, with the creation of this equal opportunity scholarship, we are realizing this goal. This groundbreaking new partnership is an extension of our Fulbright program. The Government of Chile has committed to bring 100 Chilean students to do graduate work in U.S. universities in fields that are vital for Chile's future: science and technology, environment and public health.

For our part, we will broaden English language training for Chilean students from all walks of life, giving more young men and women the opportunity to follow their academic interests in the United States. This program reflects Chile's desire to strengthen its system of higher education and it also represents the largest U.S. investment in English language enhancement for students in the Fulbright programs.

Through this new program, we are quite familiar with the kind of success that we are going to expect. The U.S.-Chilean Fulbright program represents a collaboration that goes back more than 50 years. Hundreds and hundreds of Fulbright alumni have returned to Chile to make a difference in their country and in this hemisphere, to contribute to the advancement of the betterment of mankind, to contribute to strengthening Chilean democratic institutions and to strengthening the sense of social justice and upward mobility, the belief that it really doesn't matter where you come from, it only matters where you are going. That is at the core of any democracy.

During my time in Stanford, I saw how education enables students from all around the world to improve their lives and the future of their societies. But I saw more than that. I saw how the opportunity for students from different parts of the world to study together, to struggle together, to take exams together, to go through all of the angst that is associated with that, but also to emerge on graduation day changed by their opportunities and changed by their experiences. I saw how that contributes to understanding the friendship between countries, because once you've been through an experience like that with a fellow student from some other part of the world, you're never quite the same. You never quite see foreigners in quite the same way.

And so I consider this a really wonderful and important day for U.S.-Chilean relations, for higher education in America and in Chile, and really for future progress for democratic peoples around the world as they get to know each other and get to know the wonderful horizons that higher education can open. Thank you so much for this terrific idea and thank you for your presence here. (Applause.)

FOREIGN MINISTER FOXLEY: Well, let me first say how much we appreciate your interest, Secretary Rice, and Secretary Spellings' interest, who will, by the way, will visit Chile very soon for this program. I think that this program, as Secretary Rice just said, is about changing people's lives. It's about expanding their horizons, in which young people from very often disadvantaged situations, in terms of income or the place where they live and so on, that they see that there is a road ahead which will not have any limits.

On the other hand, this program represents, I think, the type of mature partnership that the United States and Chile have achieved throughout the years, and particularly in the last few years. This is a program where the U.S. and Chile we’re going to cooperate in developing in Chile, a country that has been rather successful in terms of economic growth, in enabling Chile to move forward faster into what is called a knowledge-based society.

Through this program, we're going to associate with a number of top-rated U.S. universities who will open up to a possibility of a hundred graduate students from Chile per year to come here and do Ph.D. programs in the fields which are more relevant and important for a country that thinks that in perhaps 15, 20 years time from now will be a developed country. So we're going to emphasize all kinds of fields in engineering, sciences, biotechnology, and, of course, English language teaching. We have to have everybody in Chile speaking in English in a reasonably short period of time.

The main point of this program, as Secretary Rice was saying, is that no one should be excluded from expanding his or her possibilities to the top level of quality in higher education knowledge. No one should be excluded because of insufficient language skills. So we would like to see young people from perhaps remote places in Chile, who never thought it would be possible to even come to the United States, not less to come for a Ph.D. program, they will be excluded from the program. They will be invited to join and spend six months, even a year, studying intensive English in Chile and the United States, and then being able to expand their life's horizon.

This will be a ten-year program. We already have some 50-something universities in the U.S. who have shown their interest in participating in the program. And they have -- among them, there are some of the very best of the top ten universities in the Shanghai index of ranking of universities. Eight are from the U.S. and all of them are involved in this program, etc, so that we are really very, very pleased that in a short period of time, Condi, and in only three months, I think, we were able to move ahead with this program.

We will certainly welcome Secretary Spellings in Santiago, I think, ten days from now, or something like that. And President of Chile is extremely pleased with this type of initiative, which fully reflects what her goals are in terms of her administration and where she would like to move the country into: a knowledge-based society and a country where everybody has equal access to the highest levels of education. Thank you. (Applause.)

(The U.S.-Chile Equal Opportunity Scholarship Program agreement was signed.)

(Applause.)

ENDS

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