Veracruz - Education

Education

Public education in the state is supervised by the state Direción General de Educación Popular and the Dirección General de Educación Media Superior y Superior. The current system is the result of a number of reforms which took place in the 1980s and 1990s. In the late 1990s, 302 new school campuses were created statewide and 257 schools were remodeled. These included new schools for special education, distance learning and technological institutes, giving the state one of the highest number of school campuses in the country. There are a total of 20,479 schools, with nearly 2 million students and about 85,000 teachers. 93% of schools are in the basic education category (preschool, primary and middle schools. Preschools also include those geared towards the indigenous populations, focusing on bilingual and bicultural education in both the indigenous language/culture and Spanish. One major focus of these and other schools is to eliminate illiteracy in indigenous communities. The “Medio Superior” level includes vocational high school and technical colleges. These account for 6.6% of schools in the public system. The Superior level includes teachers’ colleges and universities. There are 166 institutes at this level, with about 68,000 students studying 221 different majors. There are also 63 master’s degree programs and six PhDs. These institutions serve about 135,000 students accounting for about 19% of the college-aged population (19–24 year olds), slightly below the national average of 24%.

The major state university is the Universidad Veracruzana, with offers 56 bachelor’s degrees, 37 masters and 5 PhDs. It is based in the capital of Xalapa and is noted for its large and varied sports programs. There are campuses in fourteen other cities. About 37% of university students attend the main public university, with a student population of 47,000 undergraduates and 2,000 postgraduates. Other important schools include Instituto Tecnologico de Veracruz in Veracruz, Universidad Anáhuac in Xalapa, Universidad de Xalapa in Xalapa, ITESM in Córdoba, Universidad Cristóbal Colón in Veracruz, the Veracruz Naval Academy and the Instituto Tecnológico del Mar.