A bold promise from Mexico¡¯s newly elected president to create 100 new public universities within his first term has been met with frustration from the academic community, who say the pledge is impractical.

Left-winger Andr¨¦s Manuel L¨®pez Obrador won the presidential election in July with more than 53 per cent of the vote ¨C more than double that of his closest challenger.

In the wake of his victory, the incoming president ¨C known as ¡°Amlo¡± ¨C said he wanted to see all school-leavers enter higher education, helped by the creation of 100 new institutions to host them all.

His pledges go against the education reforms implemented by outgoing president Enrique Pena Nieto ¨C still in office until December ¨C who has been criticised for encouraging the privatisation of higher education, allowing corporations to award degrees of questionable quality and underfunding public institutions.

91ÇÑ×Ó

Less?than a third of high school-leavers currently go on to university in Mexico ¨C one of the lowest enrolment rates across Latin America. Mr L¨®pez Obrador has said he hopes to offer full scholarships to all middle-income students to help improve this figure.

But academics argue that Mexico¡¯s primary problem is its lack of qualified teachers and lecturers, and that efforts and funding would be best concentrated in the training and retention of skilled educators.

91ÇÑ×Ó

Philip Altbach, founding director of the Center for International Higher Education at Boston College, said opening new universities in the country was ¡°among other things totally impractical¡±.

¡°There would not be enough people qualified to teach at such institutions in the short term,¡± he explained. ¡°The amount of money needed to develop 100 universities would be immense. It would be more practical to expand some of the existing universities and provide them with more funds.

¡°The money, or at least some of it, could better be spent on improving schools and teachers.¡±

Alma Maldonado, a higher education researcher at Mexico City¡¯s Centre for Research and Advanced Studies of the National Polytechnic Institute, agreed that making higher education mandatory would fail to solve pre-existing barriers to access and equality facing underprivileged students in the country.

91ÇÑ×Ó

Of the students who entered the country¡¯s largest public university, the National Autonomous University of Mexico, in 2016, for example, only 2 per cent came from the lowest socioeconomic background; many failed the entry examinations.

¡°This point is not being discussed and [yet] it is an essential point [for] a left government,¡± she said.

In his previous role as mayor of Mexico City, Mr L¨®pez Obrador created the Autonomous University of Mexico City, a publicly funded university that, unlike most other institutions in the country, had no admission exam and instead awarded places in a lottery.

This legacy offered cause for concern for Beatriz Rumbos, dean of the department of science, mathematics and statistics at Mexico City¡¯s Mexico Autonomous Institute of Technology, however, who noted that graduation rates for such a system are ¡°very, very low¡±.

91ÇÑ×Ó

¡°Amlo is promising a lot of things that are clearly not feasible,¡± she said. ¡°It would certainly be better to promise, as a first step, to overhaul existing public universities, especially in the provinces. He has also not suggested the creation of quality technical colleges, which are [also] desperately needed.¡±

A spokesperson for the National Association of Universities and Higher Education Institutions in Mexico said that the practicalities of Mr L¨®pez Obrador¡¯s higher education overhaul were still being worked out, but that another option would be to build upon the capacity of pre-existing public universities.

91ÇÑ×Ó

rachael.pells@timeshighereducation.com