Abstract:

The Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana Campus Azcapotzalco (UAM-A) needs a much better planning because it is clear that its current institutional planning has not been effective. For example, in the year 2014 it had been planned for the UAM-A to increase the enrollment by 1000 students and to increase the number of freshmen by 300 students by the year of 2016 [1]. However, contrary to the planning, the results show that the enrollment decreased in the year of 2016 by 501 and the number of freshmen increased by 122 students [2]. On acquiring extra land to extend the campus, the results are null. The failure in reaching these goals were also in obtaining extra funding for the university from other sources different from the yearly programmed governmental allocation. The main mistakes in planning have been that even though the goals were defined there were no strategies to attain them nor was there an annual follow-up to reaching or modifying the established goals. A much better planning is greatly needed because the government budget for the UAM is shrinking; for this year there was a reduction in current pesos from 6.602 billion in the year of 2016 to 6.555 billion for the year of 2017. The budget reduction was foreseeable [3]. Necessary planning is not an activity which is methodologically carried out in all the academic divisions of the UAM-A; for example, the last development plan for the Basic Science and Engineering Division was elaborated for the period from 2010 to 2015 [4]. Reaching good performance results can be difficult enough through good strategic planning. In this paper we analyze the differences between the results and the planned goals for the last few years, discuss the possible shortcomings in planning and suggest ways to improve planning and management to reach better institutional results.

References:
[1] UAM Azcapotzalco. Plan de Desarrollo Institucional de la UAM Azcapotzalco 2014-2024. In Spanish. http://www.azc.uam.mx/app/ca/docs/ca_PlanDesarrollo2014-2024.pdf
[2] UAM. Anuario Estadístico de la UAM 2016-2017. In Spanish. http://www.transparencia.uam.mx/inforganos/anuarios/anuario2016/anuario_estadistico_2016.pdf
[3] N. Domínguez-Vergara and R. Vela-Coreño, “Y los veneros de petróleo del diablo”. GSM SA de CV. Mexico. May 2015. In Spanish.
[4] CBI, UAM-A. Plan de Desarrollo de CBI 2010-2015. In Spanish.

Keywords:

Higher education, science, technology, planning, policies, management.