Unmasking university autonomy: an estimation of the Gini coefficient for 2020

Abstract

Professionally speaking the National Autonomous University of Mexico treats equals unequally. Using the scarce information available on payments to workers (administrative, academics and officials-authorities) we build a unit of equivalence, that is to say, we made their payments comparable –the hourly pay received by any “puma” worker, for example by an hourly teacher and a full-time professor. Just as CONEVAL adds to people’s income the transfers received, we add to the payments of officials the various monetary and non-monetary “transfers” they receive regularly. To estimate the inequality of payments we used the Gini coefficient –which amounted to 0.65 in 2020. A conclusion is obvious, the management model of the UNAM is inverted –focused on its bureaucracy and its full-time staff and not on academics who teach more than 70 percent of the class hours and its students– and has to be replaced now. In this regard, we will point out some actions to reduce the wage dispersion among university workers.