An international education foundation is working with American organizations to offer online courses in Spanish to this country’s growing Latino population. It joins a number of American course providers with offerings for Spanish speakers.
The foundation -- called Funiber, which is short for Fundación Universitaria Iberoamericana -- provides online courses to Spanish and Portuguese speakers in Spain and Latin America. Now the nonprofit organization wants to make its courses available to the 42 million Spanish speakers in the United States.
Sergio Abramovich, director of a new American branch called Funiber USA, is in charge of getting the effort rolling. He said the group was trying to reach professional Hispanic workers in the United States who are looking for courses in their native tongue.
“Although they are proficient in English,” Mr. Abramovich said, “they prefer to study for that master’s degree or that Ph.D. in Spanish.”
He has set up an office in New York City and is forming partnerships with Latino organizations. The next step, Mr. Abramovich said, is to form alliances with American colleges and universities to help get Funiber’s courses out to the public.
Funiber has already found success in other countries, working with colleges in Europe and Latin America to serve more than 7,000 students who take courses in such subjects as business and education, he said. Although the courses are online, Mr. Abramovich said, he wants to create a U.S. presence to reach out to American students.
For one thing, he said, forming partnerships with American institutions would help ensure the students will qualify for federal financial aid. Plus, he said, students trust local institutions more than one whose headquarters are located on the other side of the globe.
“You want to feel somebody who’s close to you, as a student,” he said. “We thought this was a good opportunity to reach out to the Spanish speakers in the States.”
Funiber will face competition, however, for those Spanish speakers, said Alvaro Romo, associate vice president for programs, services, and international affairs at the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities, which represents Hispanic-serving institutions in the United States.
Other international universities are already setting up shop here, and some American institutions, such as the University of Phoenix, have created online programs for Spanish speakers.
The coming growth in online Spanish course offerings is a good thing, Mr. Romo said. Access to higher education is limited for many Hispanics in the United States, he said. Increased competition will keep quality high while helping to bring tuition costs down.
“There is a market out there, definitely,” Mr. Romo said. “The quality issue is going to be there as part of the competition.”
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