Volume I Issue 2 Currently a part-time tat-


too artist and a business student at the Universidad Nacional Au- tonoma de Mexico, Sanchez orig- inally dropped out of school but now, several years later, she has decided to resume her studies. “I want to have my own business,” she says proudly. “I refuse to work for someone else and be exploited. My career goals focus on opening a business.” “People who are asking for


money on the streets are every day more similar to middle class people,” says Sanchez, hardly surprised but highly bothered by the fact that university grad- uates of her cohort are falling through the cracks of society. “The clothes they are wearing, their physical traits, are very similar to those of the middle class.”


Seeing her fellow stu-


dents complete their education without hope for employment at the end of day is depressing for Sanchez. “Maybe it is a kind of eliminating the weaker: you have no job, so you don’t exist, the system does not need you, in contrast, it finds you a burden,” she says, citing the experiences of some of her friends, who have graduate degrees but have had to take jobs in telemarketing and still live with their parents. Sanchez says these stu-


dents, who have no prospects for securing good jobs, are at risk of becoming members of the “nini generation,” who depend on the


support of their parents until they develop an attitude of apa- thy and give up on doing some- thing with their lives. “The nini generation is the decline of the youth, where they don’t want to get involved in anything; they live day by day,” Sanchez says sadly. “They don’t look for a worthy future, something im- possible because there are no jobs and therefore no identity. A life full of empty opportuni- ties of growth.” A chronic imbalance be-


tween the supply of and demand for young, educated employees and the resulting under-utiliza- tion of their skills is the biggest challenge facing not only univer- sity graduates in Mexico, but the Mexican economy itself. There is a need for economic develop- ment, which will spur entrepre- neurship and investment, as well as more competition between businesses. But the problems are not all with the economy – to an extent, the widespread unem- ployment of young profession- als might be rightfully attributed to the unemployed candidates themselves. Why are university gradu-


ates in Mexico not finding jobs? According to Oscar Rojas from the Center for the Study of Mex- ico and Contemporary Capital- ism, this is not the right ques- tion to ask. “Why is education in Mexico fucked? This is what we should be asking.” He explains that federal and state funding is


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