A medicine degree with no RVOE, warning seals since July 2024, 35 complaints: the Universidad Potosina campus on Avenida Carranza, San Luis Potosí

In Mexico a private university programme is valid only if it holds a Reconocimiento de Validez Oficial de Estudios (RVOE) from the federal or state education authority for that specific programme at that specific campus. Without it, grades, social service and the degree itself do not exist in the eyes of the state. A medicine programme in San Luis Potosí has become the clearest recent example of what that means for students.

Infobae reported on 18 July 2024 that students and parents of the Universidad Potosina's Licenciatura en Medicina General had protested the previous day outside the state education secretariat, SEGE. The students said the RVOE held by the institution covered only its original site on Avenida Constitución, not the Avenida Carranza campus where the medicine course was taught; a 2019 rule withdraws validity when an institution changes address without the necessary accreditation. Around 100 students said they were affected, about 35 complaints had been filed and SEGE had decided to open a sanction procedure. Astrolabio, the San Luis Potosí digital daily that has followed the case, later reported that SEGE had placed warning seals at the Carranza campus on 18 July 2024 marking it as a campus without RVOE.

Yet on 24 December 2024 Astrolabio photographed a new billboard on Avenida Sierra Leona still advertising the medicine degree. The paper reported that hundreds of students had paid for studies with no official validity, that affected students said some had lost between one and five years, that at least 35 complaints were before the state prosecutor, and that students who had completed their social service said every document the university issued was worthless. On 3 April 2025 Astrolabio reported that SEGE had placed closure seals on 15 March, that parents said classes continued regardless, with some students told to arrive at 5 am so that it would not be obvious, and that the institution had offered unrecognised programmes for six years. Families were told, the paper said, that certificates for about 40 students of the first two cohorts would be delivered by the rector at a cost he would set, after SEGE's director of planning told them the rector had met the secretariat's conditions.

The failure here was structural rather than a forged document: a real university with a real RVOE for one address, selling a medicine programme at another. The students could not transfer, because other schools had nothing valid to recognise, and the regulator's response moved from warning seals to closure seals over eight months while, according to parents, teaching continued.

Check the RVOE yourself before enrolling in any private medical programme in Mexico. The SEP maintains a public RVOE search; the number must match the programme name and the campus address, not just the institution. Ask for the RVOE number in writing, keep every receipt, and treat a university that cannot show one for your campus as a university that cannot give you a degree.