The article discusses the technical and instrumental approach that predominates in the teaching of public policies within Mexican educational institutions, both undergraduate and graduate; with the purpose of noting the gaps that exist in knowledge but also to highlight the need to develop theoretical and methodological approaches that enable an analysis of public policies consistent with our own problematic context. In that vein, the arguments of the decolonial theory are useless to analyze and reflect on the theoretical and methodological contents found in the curricula of public policies. The cases analyzed for this purpose do not constitute a representative sample in a statistical sense, but follow specific selection criteria: the importance of the institutions in the national context, availability of information, and postgraduate programs with emphasis on public policies. The aim of this analysis is first, to highlight the need to formulate alternatives to consolidate the study of public policies as a field in its own right, and, second, to reclaim some elements provided by the anthropology of public policies and decoloniality in order to enable a different kind of training of the specialists in this field.