The Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (in Spanish: Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, ITESM) commonly shortened as Monterrey Institute of Technology (Tecnológico de Monterrey) or Monterrey Tech (Tec de Monterrey) is one of the largest private, nonsectarian and coeducational multi-campus universities in Latin America with over 90,000 students at the high school, undergraduate, and postgraduate levels. Based in Monterrey, Mexico, the Institute has 31 campuses in 25 cities throughout the country and is known for becoming the first university ever connected to the Internet in Latin America and the Spanish-speaking world, having one of the top graduate business schools in the region and being one of the leaders in patent applications among Mexican universities. The Institute was founded on 6 September 1943 by a group of local businessmen led by Eugenio Garza Sada, a moneyed heir of a brewing conglomerate who was interested in creating an institution that could provide highly skilled personnel — both university graduates and technicians— to the booming Monterrey corporations of the 1940s.