Recognizing the need to prepare its students and citizens for participation in the expanding international marketplace, the Florida Legislature created the International Linkage Institute Program in 1986. The goal of the Institutes is to assist in the development and promotion of commercial, educational, and social exchanges between Florida and foreign countries determined to be of strategic importance to the state. Over the last several years, the value of the Institute program to the state has become more readily apparent.

Since international trade and investment has become Florida’s leading source of revenue, Florida must build long-term educational and cultural ties to our strategic trading partners throughout the world in order to provide high quality jobs and incomes for its residents into the 21st century.

The Linkage Institutes are each jointly administered by one or more state universities in partnership with a state community college, and are linked to counterpart organizations of higher education in the selected foreign countries.

The Linkage Institutes have developed innovative programs to bring Florida business leaders into direct contact with educators who have expertise and close working relations in targeted countries. Equally important networks are formed when students from overseas return to their home countries, often to assume important professional and business positions, and take with them the friendships they cultivated in Florida. This type of personal connection to the world outside of Florida translates into immediate and long-term benefits to the state.

The state of Florida permits each Institute to award up to 1,050 credit hours, per academic year, to partner country students through the Non-Resident Tuition Exemption Program. Students in the program must be enrolled in one of Florida’s state universities or community colleges and meet certain established academic and state-legislated criteria in order to qualify. These awards allow the foreign country students to study at in-state tuition rates.