Texas A&M International University

Texas A&M International University opened in Laredo in September 1970. Established as the first exclusively upper-level institution in Texas, it was named Texas A&I University at Laredo, a center under then Texas A&I University in Kingsville. The center offered a bachelor of science in elementary education, a bachelor of science in secondary education and a bachelor of business administration. Representing a new philosophy of higher education in Texas, the school was created primarily to serve regional needs. More than 90 percent of the 286 students enrolled were from Laredo.

In the summer of 1968, a twenty-seven-member delegation of Laredo citizens, led by the brothers and physicians Joaquín and Leonides Cigarroa, had traveled to Austin to ask the Texas Coordinating Board for Higher Education to include third and fourth-year classes at Laredo Junior College. The Coordinating Board denied the request and reasoned that enough students could not be found to warrant an institution of higher education at Laredo.