Their goal, the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), is an institution with 475 years of history, a campus built on a lava field, and a claim on Mexican public life that no other university comes close to. Justo Sierra, education minister under then-President Porfirio Díaz, gathered the scattered schools into a National University of Mexico and added a School of Higher Studies for research and graduate work. The experiment became mandatory social service for every UNAM student within two years, was written into Article 5 of the Constitution in 1942, and remains a graduation requirement at every university in the country.