Mexico City, Mexico – An atypical jump in grades, accusations of massive cheating and the intervention of the federal government put in check the first 100% digital entrance exam of UNAM in Mexico, the largest university in Latin America. France 24 spoke with academics, educational technology specialists and one of the TikTokers accused of inciting cheating.

First modification: 07/31/2026 - 23:15 Last modification: 08/04/2026 - 06:37

Trap?. The tiktoker High Failure started receiving more notifications than usual. They were attacks from users who condemned him for supposedly having incited cheating on the Internet for the first virtual admission exam of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).

Between May and June 2026, the university conducted its admission test in virtual mode for the first time for applicants from Mexico and abroad.

"Applicant, if it is your first attempt, third or thousand (...) if you need to cheat, cheat," he said in the recording, which described the admission exam as a "mere procedure" and an "archaic" method that does not measure the real abilities of the applicants. In another video, the creator generically explained a way to circumvent identity verification on camera during the test, a method that he says he did not develop, but rather heard from another content creator in the university sector.

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Consulted by France 24, High Failure maintains that its statements were taken out of context: it claims that a television outlet took a 25-second fragment of a 10-minute video, and that its real message pointed out that only each candidate knows their own family and economic situation.

Beyond the controversy, he raises a broader criticism: he accuses UNAM of "hypocrisy" in its relationship with artificial intelligence and maintains that applying the same exam to a population with different ways of learning does not select the best candidates, but rather those who "memorize better."

"There are situations where there is no privilege to attempt the exam more than once, pay for a university degree in the private sector or simply combat segregation in a 'fair' manner that has accompanied the admission exam since its creation. My message remains the same 'if you need to cheat, cheat,'" he says.

UNAM announced this Friday that it will apply an additional in-person exam to applicants selected to enter a bachelor's degree in the 2026-2027 school year.

There will be a new in-person exam

The crisis, of which there were only rumors on social networks, escalated on July 24, when UNAM stopped the opening of registrations scheduled for July 27 in order to thoroughly audit the selection. The university reported that it had left out some 3,000 candidates, 2% of the 158,712 exams administered, for violating the rules of the process.

“The purpose of this measure is to safeguard certainty for all people who participated in the admission process, as well as to guarantee that institutional actions are carried out in full compliance with University Legislation,” the university argued in a statement.

Three days later, rector Leonardo Lomelí installed a Technical Commission of 16 academics with the mandate to review the entire process, and left the door open to the most drastic option: "all options are on the table," he said, without ruling out throwing out the entire exam and repeating it. He added that the incident not only affected the university, but society as a whole.

The decision: an additional in-person exam for selected applicants. "This is not a new exam, it is a control exam precisely to guarantee that the accepted people really made an effort and did not have help that put them at an advantage over the other applicants," said UNAM rector Leonardo Lomelí.

Under slogans such as “no to AI, yes to the solution” and “in-person exam now”, a group of candidates excluded from UNAM marched around the University. The protesters demanded the physical replacement of the licensure exam in the face of what they consider a “massive fraud” in the remote test.

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Outrage arose after videos on social networks in which they encouraged people to cheat the exam and some students even admitted to having used generative artificial intelligence models such as Chat GPT for the exam.

“There is atypical behavior”: admits Undersecretary of Higher Education

A bachelor's degree candidate carrying banners declared that the reputation of the institution is at stake if the process is not repeated: “If they don't do it, UNAM's credibility will be greatly affected and the respect we have for it... well, right now we have little respect for it, really.”

"Do not deprive us of the right to study, we respect the selection process that we carry out honestly," defended César Ruiz, father of an admitted applicant, who formed another sit-in to defend their results and ask the university to continue with the process.

Ricardo Villanueva Lomelí, the Undersecretary of Higher Education, explained that UNAM reported “an atypicality in the results” of the test to enter the institution. "There is an atypical behavior that must be observed. Indeed, there is a technological component that must be reviewed. There was a change in the way of taking the exam, which is now virtual. That alone does not say anything because in other institutions it has been made virtual and it has worked perfectly," he assured.

The crisis gained strength on the public scene when President Claudia Sheinbaum opened the door for the Attorney General's Office to enter the case if the UNAM asks it to, with its sights set on Territorium Life, the company behind the admission exam platform.

"If they (the UNAM) consider that there is a major fraud and that it is even a criminal case, the institutions (FGR) are there to handle it. The important thing today is to give certainty to the young people who applied or took the exam to enter the UNAM," commented the president.

Fierce competition for places

Sheinbaum, consulted about this during her morning conference, insisted that her government respects university autonomy, but has already extended a way out to applicants trapped in limbo: places available in the network of Rosario Castellanos Universities while the litigation is resolved.

The magnitude of the funnel helps to understand why any suspicion of manipulation carries double the weight: UNAM offered 50,113 places this year, but more than half, 28,151 spaces, were already automatically assigned to graduates of their own high schools. This left a very narrow margin for the rest of the country: 158,712 candidates competed for just 21,962 places, a competition so fierce that any accusation of irregularity would generate a social debate.

"A false sense of security": what virtuality experts say

For Cimenna Chao, general director of Strategic Planning and Innovation at the Universidad Iberoamericana, the case exposes tensions that already existed before this exam and that simply became visible. No remote supervision system, he warns, guarantees by itself the identity of the holder or the integrity of his physical environment: entrusting the complete security of the process to technology generates, in his words, "a false sense of security."

"There is a kind of race between security, surveillance, hacking or evasion. That is, each new mechanism, each new control system, generates increasingly sophisticated strategies to evade it. This is an important point when these technologies are used in the educational field; it also seems to me that these systems give rise not only to this type of vulnerabilities, but also to false positives," he said.

For her part, information technology specialist Nancy Salazar agrees from another angle: the underlying error is not incorporating artificial intelligence, but delegating the design of the process. Salazar describes a pattern he frequently sees in public and private organizations, which begin the conversation by asking what platform to buy instead of what problem they want to solve and what risks are associated with that tool.

“Technology is an enabler, it can automate tasks, scale operations, make day-to-day work more efficient, but it will never replace decisions that have to do with design, supervision, etc. We are not talking about administering an exam and that's it, it is guaranteeing people who want to access this type of study that there is trust, equity and transparency for the participants,” says Salazar.

Inequality in access is the point where both converge. Chao warns that those with better devices, connectivity and digital literacy will always have an advantage, for better or worse, both in taking advantage of technology and in violating it.

Salazar maintains that not all applicants have access to the internet, a computer or even a lighted space without distractions to take an online exam. "Technology must adapt to people and not assume that everyone lives under the same circumstances," Salazar summarizes.

The specialist proposes the same from the nature of the knowledge that is measured: with the arrival of generative artificial intelligence, she maintains, memorizing information ceased to have value compared to analyzing it, interpreting it and solving problems and evaluation models have not yet caught up with this change.

"For many years, the educational environment has been aware of how to prevent someone from cheating during an exam. The arrival of generative AI forces us to ask ourselves if we continue to evaluate the correct skills. The value is no longer found in the educational aspect in memorizing information, that type of model no longer works, now what works is analyzing the information, interpreting it, solving problems, drawing your conclusions, having critical thinking," he said.

Chao questions whether in the educational sector “we should continue to support these types of tests, these types of systems, if they are still valid, if they are equitable for precisely the purpose that they served in the past.” "There is an unfair displacement of real talent. That is, there are students who probably performed excellently, who did so honestly, who prepared for years, sometimes throughout high school, and who today, when the process is sanctioned, could be left out of this selection process and access to higher education," he laments.

Regarding the work of the Technical Commission, Salazar is specific: she recommended based on technical evidence, activity logs, infrastructure configuration, records of how incidents were managed, before attributing responsibilities, and preventing the analysis from being based on hypotheses. It also introduces a debated concept in technology called 'human in the loop', or the practice of defining when a person must intervene to supervise, validate or correct the decisions of an automated system. "When the impact is the academic future of many people, risk management stops being a technical issue and becomes a commitment to public trust," he warns.

Although UNAM admitted the existence of anomalies in the process, the institution has not confirmed that the use of artificial intelligence has been a widespread practice. The ongoing investigations are trying to clarify whether there were applicants who resorted to AI systems, impersonation or other strategies to irregularly get ahead of the rest of the competitors.

"The university must be on the side of those who, with dedication and effort, prepared to access higher education," said a statement signed by the College of Directors of Faculties and Schools of the UNAM.

The company that monitored 150 applicants with a single supervisor

The penalties of the million-dollar contract signed between the National Autonomous University of Mexico and the Territorium Life company could cost the provider a fine of more than 10 million Mexican pesos (about $580,000) after allegations of alleged fraud in the online admission process.

An investigation by the Mexican newspaper 'El Universal' revealed the details of the agreement agreed with the General Directorate of School Administration of the UNAM, whose budget ranged between 40.7 and 101.7 million pesos (2.3 and 6.1 million dollars). Despite the amount, the clauses allowed a single supervisor to be in charge of monitoring up to 150 applicants simultaneously.

The contractual commitment obliged the firm to guarantee "real-time" inspection using artificial intelligence tools capable of auditing the development of the test. The system had to alert and keep a record of faults such as the presence of companions, the use of cell phones, calculators or additional screens, and even the absence of the candidate in front of the device.

The file consulted by the newspaper details that the human personnel had control panels, recordings and metrics to report any irregularity. However, public pressure led the university to pause enrollment, leaving the provider at the center of a claim that could now cost the execution of the agreement's sanction clauses.

The episode exposes a fundamental dilemma: the discussion about public education is linked to the tools with which knowledge is measured. Salazar agrees when projecting UNAM's next steps, remembering that public faith cannot be delegated to an automated system and that rescuing credibility requires absolute clarity about the system's failures.

"Let's remember that technology is going to continue revolutionizing the industry, whether you like it or not. The challenge that educational institutions face here is that evaluation models must evolve at the same pace as technology," he summarizes.

With EFE, AP and local media

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