Mexico’s top university orders 58,000 students to resit entrance exam after suspected cheating

Key Points:

• Mexico's National Autonomous University (Unam) will require about 58,000 students to retake their entrance exam after suspiciously high scores suggested widespread cheating during its first fully remote online test.
• The remote exam used AI-powered monitoring tools, but these failed to prevent fraud, with the proportion of top scores significantly higher than in previous years, especially in competitive programs like medicine.
• The scandal led to national outrage, protests by applicants, and calls from Mexico's president for a possible investigation by the attorney general into criminal misconduct.
• Unam annulled 3,174 exam results due to irregularities such as impersonation and AI use, and a technical review suggested nearly half of the exams might have involved cheating, including leaked and sold test questions.
• As a result, all admissions were halted, a technical committee was formed to review the situation, and the start of the academic year for new students was delayed from August 10 to August 31.