Abstract:

During the second half of the year 2022, most Mexican universities will be returning to in-person classes. Some schools may completely abandon virtual and hybrid modalities, which were vital since March of 2020 up to spring of 2022. Returning to the routine previous to the pandemic has been a surprisingly unprepared process, similar to the adaptation that replaced face-to-face classes with virtual lectures throughout the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. This unready transition reveals a lack of planning and understanding of the students’ situation: according to the last survey carried out by the Mexican Public Education Secretary and other organizations, 53.5% of the higher education students prefer a hybrid modality, 32.5% prefer in-person classes,12.1% prefer at-distance classes, and 1.8% do not plan to continue their studies [1]. As an example, the Mexican Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana (UAM), had to increase the quotas of many groups during the first week of presential classes, since the demand of the students enrolling in the trimester, starting on July 11, 2022, was much higher than the offer. The high demand is a result, in part, of the authorities who had decided, during the beginning of the pandemic, that students could register to various courses and would not suffer consequences if they failed their classes. Therefore, students would apply to many courses at the time, and abandon them without fearing any penalty whatsoever. However, currently both new students, as well as the previous students who have failed their courses formerly, are now in need of registering and passing their syllabus, leading them to complain about the low number of programs available, which would controversially violate the students’ right of constantly having the necessary classes available for their academic advancement, obligating the university to take the respective measures. Additionally, other students have demanded virtual classes to avoid the fluctuant price of the transportation, as a consequence of the worsened economic situation of the families of 55% of the students [1]. In fact, half of the higher education students are working or looking for employment, presently [1]. The current economic situation of the students has caused high rates of desertion in many public institutions: some engineering courses at the UAM have witnessed 66% of student loss caused by this issue. Authorities have not taken immediate and necessary actions, such as a recount or use of the lessons learned during the pandemic. This way, authorities could implement remedial measures to diminish and solve the learning deficits of the students due to the pandemic, the economic precarity of the temporary professors amid the high inflation they face, and the lack of appropriate sanitary measures in facilities within the higher education installations. Democracy must be restored in the public institutions, since most of the decisions during the pandemic were made by the authorities without an adequate consultation of the institutions’ communities, which does not help reconstruct the social fabric. In this paper, current problems within the Mexican higher education institutions are identified: various issues are analyzed, identifying the root problems while recommending solutions based on a strategic analysis.

References:
[1] SEP, ANUIES, UANL, Informe de la “Encuesta Nacional COVID-19: la comunidad estudiantil ante la emergencia sanitaria”, February 2022.

Keywords:

Virtual education, covid-19, strategic, planning.