Abstract:

This paper is about the challenges facing one of the three most important public Universities in Mexico: the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana (UAM). It is difficult for the Mexican youth to study at national higher education public institutions. In Mexico there are approximately 7.5 million youth that are neither studying nor working.Since the early 70's demand to study at the universities exceeded spaces offered in public universities. Because of this, the private universities of not very high educational quality have shown great growth. UAM has about 45,000 students now. Request for admission to the UAM since 1980 has grown more than 500%; however since 1985 the number of students enrolled in the UAM has decreased by around 21%. This situation occurs even though the number of teachers with graduate degrees and recognition by the government has increased and there are more campuses. It is noteworthy that there are clear problems of governance in some of University campuses due to power vacuum in the institution. Here we present results about the efficiency of governance and performance of the UAM in its educational mission. We found that the decisive factor in these problems is reduction in financial resources for public universities, as in many of the countries around the world. These problems have to be addressed urgently by the UAM authorities in order to avoid bigger problems.

Keywords:

Governance, university, publiceducation.