Before Mexico’s National Autonomous University (UNAM) — one of Latin America’s largest public universities — adopted online testing for undergraduate admissions, it had already seen troubling signals in previous digital exams, yet failed to act on them, a new report reveals.
In June 2025, UNAM and the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN), another major public university, jointly administered a high school entrance exam to more than 84,000 applicants. Results showed a 10 percent jump in correct answers — the sharpest rise in recent years — along with nine perfect scores, unusually high compared to past exams.
A technical commission later reviewing the undergraduate admissions process flagged that spike as “atypical.” Still, no formal audit was launched, either of the exam itself or of Territorium Life, the outside company that provided the testing platform.
Months later, a similar pattern emerged with the entrance exam for UNAM’s open and distance-learning program (SUAyED). The November 2025 exam was initially hailed as a success: no technical glitches were reported, 87 percent of test-takers rated their experience positively, and 162 exams were voided for rule violations. But when the commission dug deeper into the results, further concerns surfaced.
Read the full investigation at Excélsior for more details.
Source: <![CDATA[UNAM ignoró señales de alerta en exámenes en línea previos al proceso de licenciatura]]> (RSS::excelsior.com.mx – Portada).
Image: n_sapiens, BY-SA 2.0 (via Openverse).