Abstract:

Higher education in Mexico is a privilege, rather than a right. Its national coverage is only 35.8%. In some of the Mexican states its coverage is as low as 27%, while in Mexico City it is 90%. The Mexican society has fought for decades to have more educated people in order to develop the country. Since the 1970s, Mexican governments have promised to improve this coverage, quality and pertinence of higher education in Mexico, but their promises have ended in poor results. Additionally, employment for graduates is scarce [1] and the salaries for graduates are low. This is an election year for Mexico and a leftist party might become the winner for the first time since 1988, whose presidential candidate is promising a huge raise in public higher education coverage. For the next several years, Mexico should not only increase its higher education coverage but also continuously educate people who will live in a knowledge society in which automation and other technologies of the fourth industrial revolution will reign [2]. Therefore, Mexico should prepare people in robot-proof careers and the Mexican Government should identify the knowledges and competences that graduates should have [3] in order to be successful in a new “automated world”. In this paper we outline how the Mexican society has evolved since the beginning of the last century up to now, the current employment situation in Mexico, as well as analyze the new plan of the Mexican National Association of Universities and Institutes of Higher Education (ANUIES) to renovate higher education for the next 30 years [4] [5] and thus, finally make some proposals that the Mexican presidential candidates should consider.

References:
[1] Encuesta de Expectativas de Empleo Manpower Group México, 2018, Accessed 5 April, 2018. Retrieved from https://www.manpowergroup.com.mx/uploads/encuesta_de_expectativas/MX_0118.pdf
[2] D. N. Dominguez-Perez, N. Dominguez-Vergara, R. M. Dominguez-Perez, and J. L. Pantoja-Gallegos, A future of isolation: control and automation in the developing countries, ICERI 2017 Proceedings, pp. 7964-7973, 2017.
[3] N. Dominguez-Vergara and D. N. Dominguez-Perez, Upcoming important challenges of the Mexican Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, IATED 2018 Proceedings, pp. 7890-7900, 2018.
[4] ANUIES, Plan de desarrollo institucional, 2016, Accessed 5 April, 2018. Retrieved from http://www.anuies.mx/media/docs/avisos/pdf/PlanDesarrolloVision2030_v2.pdf
[5] ANUIES, Visión y acción 2030, 2018, Accessed 5 April, 2018. Retrieved from https://www.uv.mx/crss-anuies/files/2018/01/ANUIES.-Vision-y-Accion-2030.pdf

Keywords:

Policy, globalization, higher education, coverage.