Abstract
In higher education in Mexico, the tension between institutional practice and the directives of government authority produces a scenario of uncertainty. In recent decades the government has used planning mechanisms in an attempt to induce a more solid direction all round. Such a policy tries to assert itself in generic criteria such as the opening of opportunities by increasing student enrollment numbers and the radius of social recruitment. It does not relinquish the maxim of educational achievement and quality of service. Nevertheless, given the interinstitutional complexity of the system, it is hard to ensure that these would bring about significant corrections in the short term. The crux of the matter lies in the resolution of the ties between the government and the Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), indeed, between centralization and autonomy. One escape route from this tension has been the parallel growth of the private higher education sub-system, but in relation to the public sector the approach of official policy has been to advance evaluations as a means of information and control.
Highlights
Since the great student strike of 1968, public policy in Mexico began to pay closer attention to higher education
Starting in 1978, several important measures were adopted through an agreement between the federal government, ANUIES and the Higher Education Institutions (HEIs): a National Plan for Higher Education was formulated; the National Law for the Coordination of Higher Education was approved; and university autonomy was strengthened through the constitution (Villaseñor-García, 1988)
The expansion of the private sector, which has happened in other Latin American countries, and which accounts for 30% of total higher education enrollment, is associated with this phenomenon: middleor high-income social groups, whether for reasons of academic quality, safety in installations, values or desire for exclusivity, feel the places they once occupied in public universities are disturbed or threatened by the appearance of a number of students of a social type who did not frequent them before and seek to create their own spaces regulated by a price system
Summary
In higher education in Mexico, the tension between institutional practice and the directives of government authority produces a scenario of uncertainty. In recent decades the government has used planning mechanisms in an attempt to induce a more solid direction all round. Such a policy tries to assert itself in generic criteria such as the opening of opportunities by increasing student enrollment numbers and the radius of social recruitment. It does not relinquish the maxim of educational achievement and quality of service.
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