Higher education, particularly the National University of Mexico (UNAM), has been a frequent theme in twentieth-century Mexican scholarship. Education has been vital to both revolutionary doctrine and development strategies; student activism has had significant impact on national political life.
This important study has a narrow but significant focus: the degree to which higher education has responded to national demands in terms of public policy, the requirements of the economy, and social mobility. David Lorey argues that higher education as a whole has proven remarkably successful in meeting these demands despite internal turmoil, not necessarily because of conscious policymaking but because of choices made by thousands of individual students. Despite little formal career guidance, students have made sophisticated, informed choices in selecting their areas of specialization; choices that have accurately reflected changes in economic conditions and government priorities. (To be sure, government policy and employment opportunities have been closely linked, given that government has traditionally been the principal employer of university graduates.) Because, as Lorey argues, the economy has shaped the university, “crises” in higher education are less a symptom of internal problems than a reflection of a dysfunctional economy.
Lorey bases his argument primarily on long-term statistical series of the academic specialities of licenciados and egresados (students who completed course work but withdrew from the university before completing the thesis). Shifts in student preferences between economic (engineering, business) and social (health, education) fields reflected changes in government priorities in budgeting. A similar “good fit” has existed proportionally between student specializations and employment needs. Limited evidence even suggests a gradual increase in students from working-class backgrounds enrolling in universities.
Thus the perceived failure of Mexican higher education is actually the economy’s failure to absorb huge numbers of university graduates, particularly since 1960, when the number of graduates skyrocketed. Lorey argues that the closed Mexican economy, with its reliance on foreign technology, thwarted growth in the demand for highly trained professionals. As a result, the economy needed more “technicians,” fewer “professionals” (a distinction that one wishes Lorey had defined more clearly). Even here, the “market system” of higher education responded creatively, if unintentionally: the growing number of egresados and graduates of regional institutions filled technician spots, while graduates of elite institutions, including the expanding private sector, were hired as professionals. Thus the frequently criticized open enrollment policies and declining academic standards since 1960 were in effect a rational adjustment to the reality that employers required a lower level of expertise. Even though open enrollment contributed little to social mobility, it did offer the opportunity for higher social status. Lorey also demonstrates a correlation between high levels of student activism and periods in which the economy was especially unsuccessful in absorbing new graduates.
Lorey makes his arguments with compelling logic and an abundance of statistical data and tables. His is an important study, the insights and conclusions of which have relevance beyond Mexico.
