UNAM’s program’s first study plan was approved on February 13, 1947, a few years later, on 1958, engineer Emilio Velarde and the rest of the professors made the first of the program’s reforms.
The program was given a second update on 1967, where its main change was changing from an annual system to a semestral one (due to general UNAM reforms). Besides, a wide acceptance of risk experts with mathematical bases opened up more careeroptions, for this reason initiative was yielded to students that wished to specialize on ten optional courses.
The ’67 study plan was employed for many years. Due to the career’s nature, applied to evolving financial activities, who are constantly becoming more sophisticated and regulated, it was necessary to follow those changes in parallel with the study plan.
The second readjustment to the study plan came in 2000, aiming to level with the latest advances in actuarial science, that is why optional courses are reduced to six and Private Pensions, Risk Theory, Operations Investigations and Social security turned into compulsory subjects. Likewise, social sciences and operations investigation are seen as specialization areas.
Six years later, in 2006, another adjustment to the curricular map is made, financial mathematics is moved to the second semester in order to give it a more modern focus, which requires knowledge on differential calculus, accounting is switched to first semester; two optional courses are removed and subjects that aimed to strengthen the Faculty of Science’s actuaries mathematical bases and to cover for international standards: Stochastical Processes, Statistics III and Actuarial Administration.
In 2014, after a long and thorough analysis, a new curricular map was accepted. This presents structural and content modifications. To examine it, we present the following diagram and we will make some observations.
- English has become a part of compulsory subjects. The reason is very simple: mosts texts and sources analyzed throughout the career are in english, besides, it is a fundamental tool for professional exercise.
- Without considering language, the first semester’s amount of subjects was reduced to four. There are two reasons that support this. First, a semester with three “pure” mathematics can present a very demanding challenge; second, so we can provide an introduction to actuary subject which can help orient students throughout their career.
- Adjusting to the frenzied technological development regarding storage and processing of each time larger quantities of information, Programming II was substituted by Data Management.
- Accounting was postponed for a semester, therefore Financial Mathematics as well. Finance I and II’s subjects were compacted almost completely into a new subject: Financial Markets and Instrument Valuation (FMIV). A new compulsory subject appears on the study map: Financial Quantitative Methods. This includes subjects not seen on FMIV and underling financial product valuation, which implements stochastical models. This is why it is placed directly after the compulsory Stochastical Processes I subject.
- The rest of the changes are less transcending, be it nominal -change on the subject’s name-, location on the curricular map or on content regarding specific topics. This modification’s most important job was revising each of the course’s subjects and adapting them to the profession in the country.