▲ Before hundreds of students, the president inaugurated the first stage of this educational center in the municipality of Potosí.Photo Presidency
Alonso Urrutia and Vianney Carrera
Envoy and correspondent
La Jornada Newspaper
Sunday, February 8, 2026, p. 9
Soledad de Graciano, SLP., During the inauguration of the first stage of the Rosario Castellanos University in this municipality of Potosí, President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo announced that the “Gertrudis Bocanegra” scholarship, which is already awarded in Michoacán, as part of the Justice and Peace Plan for that entity, will be extended to all students of that institution in the country.
This is a support of 1,900 pesos every two months – for a maximum of 45 months, the period considered for studying university studies – so that they can cover the cost of transportation and some other small expenses incurred during their school stay.
Before hundreds of students from Rosario Castellanos, Sheinbaum Pardo once again condemned that educational policies during the neoliberal period practically canceled the growth of universities and high schools in the country (with the exception of some technological ones).
It was a stage where during six six-year terms education, health and housing were conceived as a business and not as a right established in the Constitution, he said.
“It is not a matter of a commodity, it is a social right. If school costs, it becomes a privilege for a few. And if it costs more and more, then fewer and fewer students are going to enter,” he said.
He pointed out that at that time they also held young people responsible for not passing the admission exam. “False, they did not want to build more universities. But with the transformation governments we claimed the right to education and that is why we built more universities and high schools,” he said, recalling his academic career and referring to his activism during the university movement at UNAM, which claimed the right to free education.
For her part, the Secretary of Sciences, Humanities, Technology and Innovation, Rosaura Ruiz. He also stated that Mexico needs to train more professionals in new careers aimed at taking advantage of new technologies, such as robotics, electronics and artificial intelligence, which are taught at the Rosario Castellanos universities.
More educational offer in NL
Later, in García, Nuevo León, the President offered the construction of more high schools in the state, by inaugurating the Industrial and Services Technological High School Center No. 299.
“We have to build more high schools that are close to the house,” he indicated. In 2025, he recalled, “we will build two in the state, in García and Juárez, and this year there will be two more, in Escobedo and Pesquería. Do not think that it is something special or very different from what happens in other countries in the world. In the United States, which is not exactly the model to follow for various reasons, you go to the high school that is closest to your home, there are enough, and in Europe the same.”
Later, he moved to the municipality of Santa Catarina, where he supervised the works of the new Regional Specialty Hospital of the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS), with an approximate investment of 4 billion pesos, for the benefit of more than 300 thousand people in the region.
There he reaffirmed his commitment to building more hospitals and adding more than 10,000 beds between his six-year term and that of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, compared to the four thousand “that were built from 1983 to 2018,” he said.
For his part, the general director of the IMSS, Zoé Robledo, highlighted that the Santa Catarina specialty hospital has an advance of 12 percent and will have at least 533 beds, 38 medical specialties and 10 operating rooms.
