Mexican rankings
Oct 28, 2010
Each year Mexican students are eager to know what the position of their (future) university in the national rankings is. Rankings play an important role for Mexican students, both in choosing their university as in valuing the diploma they have obtained.
Each year in the spring the most important higher education rankings are published by three different magazines:
- The Reader´s Digest University Guide;
- The Best Universities supplement of the “El Universal” newspaper; and
- The Best Universities supplement of the “Reforma” newspaper.
These rankings have been published for several years and are increasingly popular among students and institutions. They have become powerful tools that allow students to make a decision about their careers based on more qualitative and quantitative information then before.
Another important ranking for business schools is the yearly MBA ranking published by the Expansión magazine.
"The best universities"
As usual, each ranking has distinct focus areas, methodologies, regions and participating universities. Therefore the term "the best universities" cannot be concluded from these rankings. However, it does give a good overview of the best performances by several universities in several study fields. If you are interested in more information, or the complete rankings for a specific study field, please contact Nuffic Neso Mexico to request this information.
Each of these rankings uses distinct methodologies to establish which are the top universities. Most data used for these rankings is not quantitative, but rather qualitative information gathered from surveys. Only El Universal uses quantitative figures (60% of their calculation) like institutional accreditation, research and library services. All of the rankings consider the opinion of employers to be one fundamental of their ranking. Reforma bases its entire ranking on the outcome of these employer surveys.
All three rankings focus on the potential of graduates obtaining an employment after their career rather than on the academic formation of the student.
All use rankings divided into different study fields, but El Universal and Reader’s Digest also publish a general ranking of universities. The general ranking of Reader’s Digest is based on surveys amongst professors and students.
Reforma also used surveys (professors and students)for separate rankings consisting of satisfaction of library services, pride of their university and others. These results were not included in the main ranking. El Universal only used the “opinion of professors” in the ranking, students were not interviewed.