H Higher Education Systems and Institutions, Mexico Alma Maldonado-Maldonado and Gustavo Mejía Pérez Departamento de Investigaciones Educativas, The Center for Research and Advanced Studies of the National Polytechnic Institute (CINVESTAV), Mexico City, Mexico Background Before Mexico was the country it is today, its territories were part of New Spain, and prior to that, several Mesoamerican civilizations lived in its current area. These Mesoamerican cultures developed different types of education. The ancient Mexicas created the Calmécac (as it was called in Nahuatl), which was a place where the nobles acquired the knowledge necessary to carry out their future roles as priests, political leaders, astronomers, or musicians (López Austin 1985). Although there were different indications of higher education (HE) in other Mesoamerican cultures, it is clear that the existing concept of universities is European and medieval despite its varying antecedents in documented non-European cultures (Perkin 1991). The con- cept of having an institution that does research, teaches, and validates its students’ knowledge came about with the universities of Bologna and Paris. Because the Spaniards, unlike other conquistadors, opened universities once they con- quered their territories, Mexican institutions for higher education (HEIs) have several colonial pre- decessors (see Table 1). But since there is not a clear link between these colonial universities and current HEIs, some of the main stages in the history of Mexican HE must be studied in order to observe its peaks and valleys. Eight stages are suggested which help to orga- nize the evolution of the HE system in the country. These stages center on the establishment of sub- systems of HE and, in other cases, on the estab- lishment of universities, some of which later became the flagship universities in their respective states or cities. After the colonial stage, many institutions were created during the nineteenth century, the so-called civil, scientific, and literature colleges. According to Tünnermann (2003), the new Latin American republics imitated the Napoleonic model of universities. The idea was to create universities to serve the state, to train profes- sionals and citizens, and to separate teaching from research. The third stage in the history of HEIs in Mexico begins with the opening of the National University of Mexico in 1910, at the end of Porfirio Diaz’ s government, and at the very beginning of the Mexican Revolution. In fact, most of the first public universities of the twenti- eth century started during that time, though some of their predecessors were the colonial universi- ties, scientific institutes, or the nineteenth-century civil colleges. The fourth stage began with the # Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2018 J. C. Shin, P. Teixeira (eds.), Encyclopedia of International Higher Education Systems and Institutions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9553-1_409-1