Texas A&M will soon offer free tuition to Ukrainian students across its 11 campuses, local media outlets report.
Chancellor John Sharp said the university system will also pay for those students’ fees and some of their living expenses, the Texas Tribune reported.
The announcement comes several weeks after Sharp directed all campuses to cut ties with Russia, saying that the university system “terminated all collaboration of any kind with any Russian university or any contact by our university,” KAGS reported.
Those ties include research contracts and other collaborations between Texas A&M and Russian universities, Sharp told the outlet.
So far, Texas A&M has identified at least 14 students who would qualify for free tuition after the recent announcement, the Houston Chronicle reported. The funds will come from the Regents’ Grant Program, which was first created to support students affected by Hurricane Harvey in 2017, the outlet reported.
Eligible students will receive the funding in the form of a $25,000 grant, KAGS reported.
“Our students from Ukraine are in a unique, sad and difficult position as their homeland is under attack, their family members are either fleeing to safety or fighting to save their country’s sovereignty,” Sharp said in a memo to the university system’s presidents, according to the Texas Tribune. “In many cases, our students from Ukraine will no longer have homes to return to, and their parents remain unable to work … or worse.”
The university system will also open some of its facilities to Ukrainian professors and students so they can continue their work, the outlet reported.
“These students are Aggies. They’re us. And so we want to do everything we can to help them,” Sharp told KAGS. “Secondarily, we want to send whatever messages we can along with the rest of the country to Vladimir Putin.”
Texas A&M did not immediately respond to a request for comment from McClatchy News.
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