Examining COVID-19’s disruptive effect on education in Mexican universities

Abstract

This paper estimates the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on new entry, enrollment, and graduation outcomes at universities in Mexico, which, prior to the pandemic, had an average enrollment of 1583 students. Using administrative data on all universities in Mexico and a difference-in-differences methodology, the results show that the pandemic had a negative effect on new entry (16 %), enrollment (2.5 %), and graduation (22 %). We explore heterogenous effects by funding source (public vs private), elite university status (top 20 vs non-top 20), delivery format (synchronous or in-person vs asynchronous), gender, and ten areas of study. The results show that: (1) the decline in graduation was mainly driven by public universities, (2) top 20 universities increased their new entry relative to their non-top 20 counterparts, (3) in-person programs did not display lower impacts than asynchronous ones, except for graduation rates, (4) men and women were equally impacted in terms of graduation, and (5) when considering academic areas of study, education-related majors suffered the highest decrease in new entry (25 %), and science-related majors observed the highest decrease in graduation (38 %).