And what do you answer? I asked while taking out an analogue notepad and a pen. “If I could answer that I would be the sixth Nobel Prize winner and I would be giving lectures around the world.” The answer is not noted, but it helps me.
Because it is not Javier Milei, it is not about a president, but about an agenda embodied in millions, or in someone who is the massively voted expression of an era in which one can hate and impoverish in broad daylight and enjoy its effects. Or saying that “I don’t have to deal with emotions, I work with numbers, with reality.”
public university education march.jpg
As part of the university march on April 23, there were massive calls in the city of Buenos Aires and throughout the country.
Well, it will be data and not emotions, obtained from the last Synthesis of University Statistics Information, from the Ministry of Education of Argentina. That country where for years presidential leaders, political geniuses, have emotionlessly declared things like these:
- “Today we have a Law (on Higher Education, still in force) that puts the university in line with the business community, which is the class that has a national project.”
- “Why do they want so many universities, if everyone knows that no one born in poverty today reaches university?”
- “What is this about universities everywhere, there are more positions everywhere, we have to put an end to that” (said in the middle of the UBA).
- “Universities are a permanent kiosk, with extreme bureaucracy” (using the UBA and the National University of the Litoral as examples).
- “Tears of left-handed people” (about the National University March) or “in the universities there is pure socialist indoctrination, they are enemies of the ideas of freedom.”
In order of appearance, you can see the lineage and ideological coincidence that sealed the electoral pact of the runoff: Carlos Menem (who today has a group with his name at the Torcuato Di Tella University), Maria Eugenia Vidal, Patricia Bullrich, Mauricio Macri and Javier Milei. But let’s look at some figures, data, stripped of forced interpretations and “ideologized emotionalities.”
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There is no private without public: the myth of the intelligence of the educational market
In Argentina there are 112 universities and 20 university institutes. Among the former, the state offer is 62 and the private one is 50. Regarding higher education institutes, the relationship is reversed in favor of the private ones: five against 14.
Universities in Argentina according to type of management.jpeg
In total, the public academic offering represents 57.7%, in some parity with the private sector, but within these numbers there are important differences.
If we analyze by size of study houses, which is directly related to the enrollment they can manage, we see the following graph.
Public and private universities.jpeg
Large publicly managed institutions multiply those of private management by 10 and, if medium and large ones are considered, they more than triple it, which has a direct impact on the number of degree and undergraduate students concentrated in each sector.
Public and private university students.jpeg
To put the relationship into positive integers (no ad hominem emotional fallacy): The total number of undergraduate and graduate students in public management institutions is 2,065,115, compared to 484,674 in private higher education, that is, four times more. And if we review the new registrations, the differences remain: 556,628 of the state ones against 154,071 of the private ones.
Reasons? The breadth and territorial coverage of the public management system, economic accessibility and prestige.
The prestige they grant – not only the five Nobel Prizes, which could well be a glorious exception – but also that conferred by the Latin American ranking prepared by the consulting firm Q.S. (which covers 1,300 universities around the world) and The World University Rankings 2024 (prepared by an NGO founded in 2024 and that collects global statistics).
There, the UBAwhich libertarians describe as a bureaucratic daycare center for ideologized adolescents, It ranks first in Latin America and remains among the 100 best worldwide, surpassing the University of San Pablo (Brazil) and the UNAM of Mexico. These last two have budgets that triple and quadruple that of the UBA with its 13 faculties.
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To further clarify, these rankings weigh not only the number of entrants, students and graduates, but also the academic reputation (30% of the final assessment), the reputation among employers (15%) and the employability and sustainability of its graduates (10%). , that is, they do not configure prejudice or subjective interpretations: data, results, realities, without dealing with emotions.
To cite a prestigious private institution with a social observatory cited for its sustained monitoring of social statistics (poverty, destitution, unemployment): the Pontificia Universidad Católica Argentina appears in position 481, largely due to the good relationship between the number of professors and students in courses and the employability of their graduates.
What is the location of the universities located in the province of Santa Fe? The National University of Rosario is located in position 951, the National University of the Litoral in 1,201 and the brand new National University of Rafaela has not yet entered the first 2,000 positions.
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Due to the number of high schools of study, territorial coverage and academic prestige, with all the defections and budgetary restrictions, public management universities attract more than 80% of the total number of students, with important communication channels with the private sector that can be presented with the testimony of a teacher from the very private Torcuato Di Tella during the last Federal University March: “We adhere because the smear campaign and financial harassment affects the entire university system and many of us teach in private and public schools, without the contribution of professionals graduates from public universities, private universities would not have the excellent professors they have.”
90 teachers from Di Tella, San Andrés and the Universidad Argentina de la Empresa spoke out in writing and marched against a government that achieved what neither Menem nor Macri could: bring together the anguish of rich children and middle class or poor children. , mix tears from right-handers, left-handers and independents, to face a fiscal adjustment that leaves universities on the brink of paralysis or closure.
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My son the doctor: they do in nine what they could do in five
In the 90s, Carlos Menem It applied the owners’ program with the votes of the people and proposed a national plebiscite to pay public university fees (in addition to implementing the objectionable and still current Higher Education Law).
The bait was a question that today libertarians repeat the way they like best: loudly. How many graduates are there in relation to regular students? How much of ours does a doctor, an architect, a lawyer or worse yet… a journalist cost?
Let’s look at the discharge rate according to the report we present in this note, disaggregating according to two variables: type of management and gender.
University graduates in theoretical time.jpeg
The estimated theoretical time is five years for undergraduate and degree offers, which range between a three-year technical degree and a five or six-year bachelor’s degree. And the conclusion is that while the number of students increases by 39.7% year-on-year (2020/2021), there is a nine-year extension for graduation, which almost doubles the stipulated time.
This discharge rate is below those exhibited by Latin American countries with much more economically and racially restrictive systems (without anyone being offended, to the detriment of Afro-descendants and indigenous peoples), such as Chile (32%) and Brazil (33%).
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There are intervening variables that affect these rates: the need to study and work at the same time depending on the economic realities of each country, the family configuration and planning of the students, the academic entry and exit restrictions.
Another fact that should not be clouded by overinterpretations and violent emotions: the abrupt drop in the university budget that had been recovering since 2020. The table includes the annual estimate at 2024 values and the announcements for 2025.
University budget 2020 to 2025.jpeg
It is worth saying that instead of discussing how to improve the performance of the main indicators of the university system, how to optimize the relationship between students and graduates thinking about the professional and personal fulfillment of young Argentine women (and benefit for the markets in which they operate). inserted, by the way), what prevails is the adjustment due to prejudice and ideological revenge, due to the rule of data that orders adjustment without paying attention to anything other than the reality of the numbers.
Today they confess to us that social sensitivity is a matter of weak politicians, emotional left-handers of life, who despite everything defend themselves by marching and have just proclaimed a new 48-hour university strike, convinced that emotion kills data, and that structural corrections they improve them.
