Una mirada sobre la educación superior mexicana: instituciones, saberes y mercado

Despues de un largo proceso en el que reivindico su protagonismo en materia de educacion, el Estado mexicano llego a afianzar su papel educador en el nivel superior, en realidad consolidado a raiz de la revolucion de 1910. No obstante, ante el crecimiento de la demanda educativa a partir de los anos setenta y de la crisis economica de la decada de los ochenta, recurrio al mercado quedandose con la rectoria del sistema de educacion. La consiguiente extension del sector privado de nivel superior, que crecio mas rapido que las universidades publicas, llevo sin embargo a una mayor estratificacion de los establecimientos y el acceso a ellos se torno desigual. Asi, las elites se desplazaron del sector publico hacia las instituciones privadas de prestigio. El auge de la educacion superior particular condujo tambien a la mercantilizacion y a la desvalorizacion de los saberes mientras perduro la tradicional orientacion a la ensenanza profesional (como consecuencia, la creciente investigacion se quedo casi exclusivamente en el ambito publico). En conclusion, la irrupcion de la competencia en el nivel superior no mejoro la calidad de la educacion sino que contribuyo a la constitucion de un sector educativo precario mediocre que ni siquiera garantiza una segura insercion laboral. English: Following a long struggle to establish its authority over education, the Mexican government finally managed to take control of higher education in the aftermath of the 1910 revolution. However, faced with a growing demand for education since the 1970s and an economic crisis in the 1980s, it had no alternative but to turn to the market, retaining only its normative function in the process. The rapid expansion of private institutions, fast outnumbering public universities, has led to a much more pronounced stratification of higher education schools and made access unequal. One consequence is that the elite have shifted from public to prestigious private institutions. Another is that the rise of the private higher education sector has turned knowledge, still business-oriented, into a commodity and lessened its value (leaving as a result the increasing research activities almost exclusively to public universities). In the end, the emergence of competition among institutions has failed to improve the quality of higher education and contributed instead to the creation of a mediocre precarious education sector which does not even guarantee long-term employability.