Exploration of the link between courses of study and regulatory frameworks at the Autonomous Metropolitan University

Abstract

Within the context of performance assessment of public Institutions of Higher Education (IHE) in Mexico, new criteria were implented in 2008 for admission to Bachelor’s degree studies at the Autonomous Metropolitan University (UAM), in order to improve the academic profile of new entries as well as the performance of the courses of study. We used this initiative as an inflection point to compare the academic  courses of two student generations, class of 2004 and 2008 repesctively. We used two references: Rules for University Studies (RES for its acronym in Spanish) and the rules of the federal scholarship program (PRONABES for its acronym in Spanish). Among other results we observed that the new admission criteria had a positive impact only on courses regulated by PRONABES, but for the rest the lag persisted. Supported by sociological institutionalism, we attributed this result to the incompatibility of the rationale in the new admission criteria with the regulatory framework that regulates the status of student of the UAM.