Mexico City.- The Supreme Court of Justice today rejected a project that established, for the first time, that higher education provided by the State must be absolutely free, unless public universities demonstrate with evidence that they lack resources.
The project rejected by the Second Chamber, by Minister Lenia Batres, proposed confirming an injunction in favor of a Law student from the FES Acatlán of the UNAM, who challenged the payment of a fee for the diploma course he chose to obtain his degree.
The argument was that, after the 2019 educational reform, the third article of the Constitution provides for free higher education, which was previously only mandatory for basic education. However, ministers Luis María Aguilar, Alberto Pérez Dayán and Javier Láynez voted against, while Yasmín Esquivel declared herself barred, due to the litigation she maintains against the UNAM for the alleged plagiarism of her bachelor’s thesis.
Although there were no public comments, Court sources reported that the majority considers that the charge in this case, challenged by student Abraham Cano Díaz, was valid, because it involved additional courses to those of the degree itself.
This is one of the arguments of the FES Acatlán and the UNAM Rectorate, which affirm that the diploma is a form of continuing education, to a certain extent comparable to a postgraduate degree, so it would not qualify as part of free higher education. The university authorities even allege that the protection should be discarded because Cano Díaz was the one who chose a degree method that involved a cost, when there were others available that are free. Minister Javier Láynez is the one who must present a new project to the Chamber, in which he will surely propose denying the protection. “The higher education provided by the Mexican State, through the corresponding educational institutions, is subject to the principle of free education, therefore, it is not feasible to impose conditions of access, permanence or completion, such as recovery fees, that may imply some type of difference in treatment for the completion of this educational level,” said the rejected project. Batres proposed generating a series of requirements that public universities would have to meet to apply fees to undergraduate students. These requirements were: prove the lack of resources; demonstrate that all efforts were made to obtain them without success; demonstrate that the maximum resources were applied, or that the resources available were applied to protect another human right (and not any social objective), and that the relative importance of satisfying it was greater. The May 2019 reform ordered that, from that date, sufficient resources must be allocated in the federal and state budgets to guarantee free higher education, as well as a federal fund for its long-term financing.
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