HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE FOURTH TRANSFORMATION OF MEXICO

In Mexico the new leftist government has promised great changes as those that started with the Mexican Independence in 1810, the War of Reform in 1857 and the Mexican Revolution in 1910. It claims that this time the transformation of the country will be pacific. Some of these changes will be in education. On July 1, the Mexican President won with more than 30 million votes (53.1% of the ballots) and has very ambitious goals in education. The new Mexican President has announced the creation of one hundred single-career new universities in different parts of the country. He has also established that higher education will be obligatory in Mexico notwithstanding that the present national higher education coverage is of 38.4% and that the averaged educational level of the Mexican population is of 9.1 years. He has established that the careers in the single-career universities will be according to the specific needs of the regions, despite that some technological Institutes which were created at the beginning of the millennium have not been successful in increasing the national enrollment because students prefer studying traditional careers in well-established prestigious higher education institutions [1]. Apparently, the new Government has set those goals without any foresight analysis. Actually, the National Association of Universities and Institutes of Higher Education (ANUIES) and the Public Education Secretariat (SEP) had no plans to build the one hundred singlecareer universities in Mexico in the last 6 years, although for many years they have identified the need to increase enrollment in the Mexican higher education system. The needs to plan for the long-term higher education is necessary and urgent taking into account what has not worked in the past. And also considering that a 4.4 percent of young professionals are unemployed. A lot percentage of the employed professionals earn low salaries or work in informal businesses. To plan for long term Mexico has to take into account the upcoming fourth industrial revolution, the necessity of reducing the greenhouse gas emissions to decrease the menace of future disastrous global warming and the need to reduce the huge social and economic inequalities in Mexico. In this paper we analyze the proposals of the new government and make recommendations to construct a long-term plan for higher education.