Mexican president-elect wants every kid to go to college

Authored by abcnews.go.com and submitted by eaglemaxie
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Mexican President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is promising to send to college every young person who wants to attend.

Lopez Obrador told reporters Saturday that all young Mexicans will have the opportunity to study. He said that may require building new high schools and universities.

Future education secretary Esteban Moctezuma said later that the government will provide $126 in monthly scholarships to students who need financial help to finish high school or university, if the budget permits. He said the new government does not plan to increase taxes.

Lopez Obrador views education as a way to put otherwise unoccupied youths to work and reduce crime. He pledged earlier in the week to pay salaries for apprentices employed by Mexican companies as part of $5 billion package of scholarships and training.

ninatodomal2150 on July 8th, 2018 at 03:51 UTC »

As a Mexican, I'd like to give you some background info on how the college system works here. We've got both private and public colleges. The most important and prestigious public college is UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico), which only costs 20 cents per semester, so obviously everyone wants to get there. Given the fact that demand is so high for public colleges, those who want to get to one must take an admission exam. Those who get the required score get in. Those who don't have to either wait for the next opportunity the following year or pay for a cheap private school, whose prestige and quality isn't that good. Problem is, demand is very high, so required scores are very high too and many kids are rejected. That's become a problem which Lopez Obrador wants to solve by instituting raffles instead of exams to decide which kids get in.

While I do think this would be a much more egalitarian system to decide who goes to college, I don't actually agree with it since it would be letting kids that don't have the required knowledge get into college. As an English teacher I have seen first hand how the Mexican education system has failed its students. There are college age students who can't make a simple addition, don't know the basic facts about Mexican history or are utterly incapable of critical thinking. Telling these kids they are good enough to go to college just because they somehow managed to finish high school is a total disservice to them and it's setting them up for failure. It's also a disservice for college teachers who are already underpaid and overworked (at least those who don't have a tenure and have to manage two or three jobs just to survive) and now will have to double their efforts to try to help these students catch up with those who do have what's necessary to succeed. Don't even get me started on the massive amount of tax money that will be lost when those kids start dropping out.

Rusty51 on July 8th, 2018 at 02:06 UTC »

While Mexico has some excellent universities, it also has a lot of unaccredited institutions that pass themselves as legitimate. There needs to be a complete overhaul in the education sector for this to mean anything.

goulaise on July 8th, 2018 at 02:02 UTC »

He wants them to attend college, and will provide them with lithium batteries for laptops to help