Azerbaijan, Baku / corr Trend S.Babayeva /Azerbaijani students will have the opportunity to study IT at American universities. The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, is in talks with the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and San Jose State University (SJSU) who signed a memorandum of cooperation with Azerbaijan in February.
Talks are in progress to determine how many places will be available and the length of study time. Similar talks are being carried out with the Asian Institute of Technology based in Thailand.
After completion of talks, candidates will be invited to apply and documents will be sent to the universities for final selection. The ministry hopes to achieve a resolution to the issue at the end of 2007.
Currently approximately 30 students from Azerbaijan are studying IT at Mayson University in the US, the Academy of Communication of Odessa and the Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology.
On the basis of an agreement with these universities the Azerbaijani students study free of charge and receive an allowance from the Communications Ministry. The major requirements of the candidates are that they have Azerbaijani citizenship and good command of English (a holder of TOEFL or IELTS certificate).
"We are waiting for news from Sweden - the Hoteburg University of Information Technology where eight candidates have made an application," the Ministry announced.