▲ Last December, the federal agency completed a survey on the use of this technological tool.Photo Roberto García Ortiz
Laura Poy Solano
La Jornada Newspaper
Sunday, February 1, 2026, p. 9
The impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on higher education is evident. In Mexico, 77 percent of students and 78 percent of teachers use it to produce academic texts, and at least half a million university students use it for emotional support, says Carlos Moreno Arellano, general director of University and Intercultural Education, of the Ministry of Public Education (SEP).
In an interview, he said that last December he concluded the application of a survey on the use of this technological tool among the university community in the country, in which normal and public and private institutions, as well as intercultural, polytechnic and technological institutions, participated.
“We obtained more than 1.5 million valid responses from students and nearly 170,000 from teachers, which represents 35 percent of the latter, and 30 percent of the former. Without fear of being wrong, this is the largest sample in the world on the use of generative AI in higher education,” he indicated.
Among the first preliminary findings, it was identified that nine out of 10 students and teachers have applied it on at least one occasion, so “there is no gap in use between both sectors, which contradicts samples collected in other regions, such as Europe or the United States, where it was estimated that young people used it more.”
Despite this, he pointed out, 71.3 percent of students and 71.8 percent of teachers indicate that they do not know any institutional regulations of their university on the use of AI, that is, there is a massive application, but a gap persists in institutional policies.
They add up, he said, to worrying practices, since 10 percent of students and 9 percent of teachers use it for emotional support. Of them, 50 percent considered that it helped them a lot discuss with an algorithm about your problems. “It is clear that we cannot leave the mental health of our young people in the hands of AI.”
Moreno Arellano emphasized that university teaching “cannot continue as a practice of mere transmission of information, because students have many ways to obtain that data. If we only consider digital learning, there are more Mexicans following courses on the Coursera platform – more than 7.5 million – than the total enrollment reported for higher education, 5.5 million students.”
Faced with the new challenges that artificial intelligence imposes on this level of instruction, the official called to “resignify the university, to transform its pedagogical and curricular model. We have to be self-critical in institutions and change the traditional model of teaching a lecture for a teaching practice that encourages debate in class, the generation of complex thinking and critical reflection.”
He mentioned that in the country 30 percent of those who manage to enter a higher education institution leave the classrooms in the first year, which is “a social, financial, human tragedy, and we must take charge and assume responsibility as educational authorities and universities that many young people leave because they simply do not like what they see. They are not satisfied with the curricular model or do not have enough flexibility.”
