La evaluación de la educación superior

Su función social

Abstract

This article deals with the issue of institutional evaluation and the actors of public post-secondary education. Evaluation is not treated from a pedagogical point of view or as a tool for evaluating subjects or courses. It is, rather, considered as a management policy of post-secondary education and its institutions, emphasizing features of its function in society. In other words, we discuss the role which it is desired that evaluation should play in the attainment of society's goals for post-secondary education. The first part of the article gives a brief summary of these goals, and of the basic trends constituting the most widespread model currently used in post-secondary education in Mexico. In the second part, based on this model we describe the development of evaluation in Mexico in recent years, with an emphasis on the role it plays in the societal function of post-secondary education.