Immigrant of the Day: Eduardo Ochoa (Argentina)

 
President Barack Obama named Eduardo M. Ochoa assistant secretary for postsecondary education on Feb. 23, 2010. Confirmed by the U.S. Senate, he serves as the secretary’s chief advisor on higher-education issues and administers more than 60 programs, totaling nearly $3 billion annually, that are designed to provide financial assistance to eligible students enrolled in postsecondary institutions.

A native of Buenos Aires, Ochoa attended bilingual schools in the Argentinian capital before immigrating with his family to Portland, Oreg., where his father, a biochemist, had been hired to run the clinical lab at Portland’s Good Samaritan Hospital. Ochoa earned his bachelor’s degree in physics, with a minor in philosophy, from Reed College in 1973. He finished his master’s at Columbia University in nuclear science and engineering.  After working for three years as an assistant and associate engineer in New York, Ochoa began his Ph.D. in economics at the New School for Social Research, where his thesis on labor values and the prices of production during the postwar period won the Edith Hansen award for an outstanding dissertation in economics and political science.

KJ