A rapidly growing number of students in Mexico are attending private universities, but there are increasing concerns about the quality of many of the new institutions.
A new campus rises almost every week, but critics worry that some may be 'junk universities' With its endless expanse of bleak, cinder-block tenements, this city north of the Mexican capital seems an unlikely setting for a business success story.
The Mexican government has shut down 88 private universities over the past two years for failing to comply with basic standards, education officials said this week.
Laureate Education Inc, a for-profit higher education provider that boasts former U.S. President Bill Clinton as honorary chancellor, is planning to launch an initial public offering, according to people familiar with the matter.
When Jesús Ignacio Lechuga applied to college three years ago, he was looking for an education that would be affordable and allow him to work and study at the same time. So he applied to the International College for Experienced Learning, or Universidad ICEL, a for-profit university in Mexico City, where tuition is 10 percent of what it is at the city's elite nonprofit universities and classes are offered at nights and on weekends.
As Mexico’s last baby boom comes of age, more young people than ever aspire to a college degree. A rush of private higher education institutions has arrived to meet rising demand.
With its endless expanse of bleak, cinder-block tenements, this city north of the Mexican capital seems an unlikely setting for a business success story. But within days of opening a new campus here in 2002, the privately run Technological University of Mexico was mobbed with more than 2,000 applicants. The reason: It offered a mix of practical, job-oriented education and brand recognition, at a price residents could afford.
President Donald Trump´s threat to deport millions of illegal immigrants – half of them Mexicans – has triggered an unprecedented campaign by the Mexican government and universities. A raft of measures announced in recent weeks seek to reincorporate returning migrants into the country´s education system and labour force while defending those who wish to remain in the United States. Trump has vowed to deport as many as three million illegal immigrants, with those with criminal records at the front of the queue. However, there is growing fear among the hundreds of thousands of university students and workers who are beneficiaries of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals or DACA programme – which grants temporary legal status to certain immigrants who arrived as minors – following the detention of several DACA holders in recent weeks. A recent series of menacing tweets by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, suggesting that even DACA holders could be subject to deportation, has sparked further alarm. Mexicans represent roughly 5.8 million of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States. They include an estimated 400,000 Mexicans known as Dreamers, for the proposed federal Dream Act that sought to provide legal status for young immigrants. Many have little or no support system in Mexico and some don´t even speak Spanish. In response, the Mexican government is seeking to ease the repatriation process for hundreds of thousands of migrants, particularly students. New legislation On 17 March, the Mexican Congress approved new legislation that streamlines the application process to schools and universities for returning migrants. The changes to the federal Education Law empower private colleges to revalidate transcripts from other Mexican or foreign institutions. Even more significant, students who studied abroad no longer need to present an apostille – a diplomatic notarised seal – along with their transcripts, a process that can take weeks and cost hundreds of dollars. The feder