RIHE Open seminar An overview of Mexican Higher Education Structural characteristics, growth trends, policies and equity issues by Germán Álvarez-Mendiola, Professor, Department of Educational Research, Centre for Research and Advanced Studies, Mexico Friday, 30 January 2015, RIHE, Hiroshima University hiroshima-u.ac.jp/en/top/kenkyusyo/p_qee98o.html * Currently, RIHEs website is unavailable due to technical difficulties. (Abstract) The seminar will present two general themes of Mexican higher education. The first is an overview of the system and the public policies, and the second is a scrutiny of equity issues. Within the first topic, Dr. Alvarez will present an analysis of the renewed growth of the higher education system, both in terms of enrollment and number of institutions, paying particular attention to the inter-institutional differentiation and the specificities of the public and private sectors. The heterogeneous Mexican higher education system includes universities, polytechnic, technological and intercultural institutions distributed throughout the country. Also, the speaker will offer a synthetic analysis and critical considerations about effectiveness of quality assurance and evaluation policies in three levels: institutions, programs and professors. Finally, some considerations about the lack of an adequate regulatory framework over the private sector, which has allowed the proliferation of a wide sector oriented solely by profit and the absence of guaranteed quality of services and results, will be addressed. In the second topic, Dr. Álvarez will discuss major issues on equity. Although the presence of low-income sectors has increased, the system favors the upper classes of society. Public spending on higher education is regressive. The coverage rate of the age group (19-23) is very low compared to OECD countries or even to similar ones. To serve the indigenous population government has established intercultural universities, but the presence of ethnic youth remains very low. Internally, the system is segmented. At the top, the elite and prestigious but expensive private universities and some public universities are located in good academic standing. But on the base of the system are low quality institutions that accommodate lower middle class students. To try to compensate income differences, federal government has implemented a wide range of scholarships. However, program coverage remains low. Finally, as concluding remarks, the speaker will critically discuss the problems of quality assurance policies, especially the way it has reinforced old quality problems, far from solving them. It will also present major challenges to improving educational equity issues.
Posted on: Tue, 13 Jan 2015 01:04:59 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015