New Students, New Institutions: Challenges for Academic Legitimation and Social Sustainability of Intercultural Universities in Mexico

Abstract

Intercultural Universities (IUs) and ethnically-based programmes have come to represent novel and innovative experiences in the field of higher education in Mexico. At the same time, however, they are fragile institutional constructions, torn between sometimes contradictory political responsibilities on the one hand, and scientific and higher education imperatives on the other. IUs and these programmes serve a student body whose entry to university has been, historically, randomized and restricted. Their key aim therefore is to reduce the asymmetries in university entrance and graduation that affect the indigenous peoples as a socioeconomically marginalized and culturally diverse group. For this reason, the IUs have adopted a mandate of social responsibility and, at the same time, undertaken to produce knowledge about their own internal operations in relation to those who make up the clear majority of their student body, in order to justify their existence as viable, recognized options in the field of higher education. With a view to supporting ‘otherness’, and to promote the redistribution of opportunities and institutional positioning, IUs have experimented with schemes that promote learning in an intercultural way among vulnerable groups. These schemes, even though localized, still allow for some reflection on the possibilities of constructing meaningful practices of this type, in mid-level developing countries.