A major five-year study – drawing on research with over 300 individuals across six Mexican states – finds that Indigenous students in higher education in Mexico face important institutional barriers to inclusion, as well as discrimination with regard to Indigenous languages and knowledge systems. Indigenous students' increasing access to universities is challenging the colonial and postcolonial legacies of higher education in Latin America. In particular, its monocultural and monolingual nature excludes the linguistic and cultural diversity that Indigenous students can contribute to campus life and academic learning. These findings offer important insights for national policy and highlight crucial changes that higher education institutions in Mexico need to make. These institutions should take advantage of sources of diversity in order to rethink and restructure study programmes and curricula. They should also improve access to higher education in rural contexts and incorporate ways of learning from non-hegemonic and non-Western knowledge.

Authors: Dr Gunther Dietz, Dr Judith Pérez-Castro and Prof Michael Donnelly.