The Education Reform in Mexico. New rules for higher education institutions?

Abstract

Why should we be concerned about the impact of the Mexican Education Reform, which focuses on the evaluation of basic and upper secondary education, on the country´s higher education institutions? By applying the new institutionalism approach (North, 1994; Helmke y Levitsky, 2004; Schmidt, 2010), with its applications for the Mexican higher education sector (Acosta, 2014; Ordorika, 2014), this article argues that there are three reasons why the heis should take an interest in what occurs at earlier levels of the education system: first, because the reform impacts the way public high schools operate;
second, because there is a need for improved quality control mechanisms at the university level; and third, because the heis can improve their critical analysis skills regarding government education proposals. Public autonomous universities possess the capacity to act independently and criticize freely.