It is but 1 to 5 percent of what counterparts pay at private universities and indeed less than 10 percent of what many UNAM students were charged at their private secondary schools. Most UNAM students can easily afford the tuition. But much is at stake. Perhaps Latin America's best-known university, UNAM has become a key battleground in a broader Latin American and, indeed, worldwide fight over tuition. The main economic and equity arguments are the familiar ones of who pays and who benefits.
Supporters also highlight the private rates of return to a university education.
Critics, on their part, fear that tuition will rise once the taboo is broken. Some argue that any tuition would place an intolerable burden on students of modest means and therefore reduce access. However, it is the political arguments and ramifications that are most interesting in the UNAM case. Critics are fighting not just a modest tuition but what they see as an extension of a neoliberal agenda, World Bank promoted, into the heart of Mexico's cultural heritage. In turn, their antagonists denounce an absurd populism, one that masks self-interest in flowery, antiquated revolutionary rhetoric.