The geography of chances. The autonomous universities situated in towns with low higher education supply

Abstract

One of the strategies implemented by the Mexican government in order to increase the educationaloffer and coverage in higher education (he) in Mexico has been the decentralization of the autonomous universities (au). In order to obtain an overall view of the decentralization processes of the au, the author created a database with information gathered from the websites of the diverse universities and theStatistical Yearbook 2014-2015, together with sociodemographical information from the towns available in the database of the National Population Service (Consejo Nacional de Población), the National Institute for Statistics and Geography (Instituto Nacional de Estadísticas y Geografía, inegi) and the Public Education Ministery (Secretaría de Educación Pública). The results show the national state of how hesupply has been increased by means of the decentralized seats. In addition to this, 36 cases are analyzed in which the seats of the au are the only way to acceed to he. This analysis shows that in towns with lowhe offer the seats are in benefit to young people who come from rural towns or villages with low edu- cation levels. Nevertheless the data show that those decentralized seats are working below capacity andthat they often experience difficulties to guarantee that students keep in school and that they successfullycomplete their studies.