During the last weeks, the education reform issued by President Peña on February 25th, 2013 has been just lying there, like a forgotten rag doll in the closet, overshadowed by the (supposedly unpopular yet still unknown) tax and energy reforms. It has been reported that Congress will once again bring the education issue to media attention when the secondary laws of the Constitutional reform are discussed and approved on the extraordinary period programmed for the second half of August. Regardless of the eventual benefits of the full reform package, these are basically concentrated on one topic: basic education. However, the inner demons of the Mexican education system do not exclusively inhabit there. Although the changes proposed would imply some progress, there are several additional issues to be assessed. If we grant the supposition that primary and secondary school problems will be solved, what is left for youngsters in that reform?
On July 14th, UNAM published the results of its admission process. Same old story: 9 out of 10 applicants did not get a place in the university. Aside from UNAM, thousands of youngsters are rejected by institutions of higher and technical education for several reasons that go from limited places to lack of capacities. That way, every year the ranks of youngster who have no work or education options grows higher: more than 1.3 million of individuals aged between 14 and 29 years do not have a job.
According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Mexico’s education future is worrisome. In its 2013 report “Education at Glance”, it highlights that the number of individuals with higher education levels has increased in the past decade and the total education investment in the country is close to the OECD’s average. Although, it remarks that the amount of youngsters enrolled aged between 15 and 19 years in Mexico is less than OECD’s average and that 2 out of every 3 youngsters abandon the education system in the four years after they finished compulsory schooling. As a consequence, 1 out of every 4 youngsters of that group are neither employed nor educated (they are called NINIs, for its Spanish acronym), which makes Mexico the country with the third highest number of NINIs. Finally, the report contends that not only are NINIs growing apart from the labor market but also those with higher education levels are facing greater unemployment conditions than other youngsters of OECD countries. Will the “demographic bonus” turn into a “generational tragedy”?
With the recently approved reform, the sickness of the Mexican education system could be cured within the basic structure (a result that will certainly take a long time in being perceived). Unfortunately, the issue of what the country will do with so many well-prepared youngsters with basic and middle education remains a pending problem. It’s certainly clear that the solution will not be reached only with more universities or student places but with a development strategy that boosts economic activity and, therefore, opportunity spaces for youngsters. If this is no taken into account, the ranks of two sectors that do offer access to youngsters in Mexico may well be replenished: informality and organized crime.
CIDAC
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