Abstract:

The Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana (UAM) is one of the largest and most prestigious universities of Mexico [www.uam.mx]. Their largest and oldest campuses are Azcapotzalco, Cuajimalpa, Iztapalapa and Xochimilco which are located in Mexico City. Lerma, its newest campus, has neither graduates nor proper installations yet. Several statistical indicators regarding learning-teaching processes for the four oldest campuses are very different. Students fail courses far more in Azcapotzalco, Cujimalpa and Iztapalapa than in Xochimilco. The students spend much more time to get their degrees than the one established in the curricula, except in Xochimilco. Xochimilco has a modular educational system which could hardly be used to prepare better engineers in the other campuses.

One of the recent efforts to increase the number of graduates in the UAM were some changes in the curricula in Azcapotzalco. The result was that the number of graduated students increased from 1139 in 2012 to 1579 in 2013 but that number decreased to 1482 in 2014. Besides that, since 2012 the average time to finish a career in Azcapotzalco has increased in one trimester. These results show that the changes in the curricula have to be carefully planned and evaluated continuously and systematically, considering their consequences [N. Dominguez-Vergara, et al. Higher education in Mexico and comparison of indicators of four public higher education institutions. Proceedings ICERI 2014. Valencia, Spain. 17-19 November, 2014. pp. 3433-3439]. In this paper, we start to identify what has worked in the campuses of the UAM, other universities in Mexico and elsewhere, like the University of Texas at Austin, in order to find strategies which could improve some learning-teaching processes at the UAM.

Keywords:

Organization, policies, public education, private education, strategic planning.