Abstract

MEJIA-PEREZ, Gustavo  and  WORTHMAN, Shaye S.. The geography of chances. The autonomous universities situated in towns with low higher education supply. Rev. iberoam. educ. super [online]. 2017, vol.8, n.23, pp.25-48. ISSN 2007-2872.

One of the strategies implemented by the Mexican government in order to increase the educational offer and coverage in higher education (HE) in Mexico has been the decentralization of the autonomous universities (AU). In order to obtain an overall view of the decentralization processes of the AU, the author created a database with information gathered from the websites of the diverse universities and the Statistical Yearbook 2014-2015, together with sociodemographical information from the towns available in the database of the National Population Service (Consejo Nacional de Población), the National Institute for Statistics and Geography (Instituto Nacional de Estadísticas y Geografía, INEGI ) and the Public Education Ministery (Secretaría de Educación Pública). The results show the national state of how HE supply has been increased by means of the decentralized seats. In addition to this, 36 cases are analyzed in which the seats of the AU are the only way to acceed to HE. This analysis shows that in towns with low he offer the seats are in benefit to young people who come from rural towns or villages with low education levels. Nevertheless the data show that those decentralized seats are working below capacity and that they often experience difficulties to guarantee that students keep in school and that they successfully complete their studies.

Keywords : access to higher education; expansion of education; educational opportunities; public universities; Mexico.

        · abstract in Spanish | Portuguese     · text in Spanish     · Spanish ( pdf )