Javier Milei’s chainsaw to public education has put Argentina’s universities on a war footing. Protests by students and teachers have multiplied in recent days, with peaceful takeovers of buildings, open classes in the streets and mobilizations. The teachers unions carried out a national strike this Thursday with 95% follow-up and have announced another 48-hour strike for Monday, October 21.
“I am not going to give in,” the far-right president warned the LN+ television channel, asked about the demands that focus on the meager salaries of professors, which are causing a teaching exodus, according to the rectors of the main public universities in the country. country. The National Interuniversity Council estimated that 70% of teachers’ and non-teachers’ salaries are below the poverty line.
Two weeks ago Milei vetoed the University Financing law that forced the Government to update resources, and justified it under the well-worn argument that it put the fiscal balance in check. Although the Congressional Budget Office calculated an impact of 0.14% of the Gross Domestic Product, a majority of legislators supported the Executive in its questioned decision.
The cut will be sustained
With Milei’s arrival at the Casa Rosada in December, the Education area was institutionally demoted from Ministry to Secretariat, with a budget reduction estimated at 50%. The biggest adjustment in ten months of government fell on public universities, which depend directly on the Nation, since basic and secondary education (primary and secondary) is the responsibility of the 24 provinces.
Additionally, Milei eliminated the National Teacher Incentive Fund, which balanced the salaries of teachers across the country, and cut student scholarship programs.
At the beginning of the year, the far-right Government extended the 2023 budget without updating it with inflation, which at that time was 290% year-on-year (it was 209% year-on-year in September). That led to a massive mobilization on April 23 that forced the Executive to increase operating expenses by 270% in May.
The conflict has been revived after the presidential veto, and ahead of next year. The salaries of teaching and non-teaching staff account for nearly 90% of the university budget, while operating expenses account for 10%. The unions allege a salary delay of 63%, mainly due to the high inflation in December (25%) and January (20.6%), when they received an extra 6% to the current agreement.
For 2025, the Government budgeted for public universities half of the funds that the rectors stated were necessary to guarantee their operation. Against this backdrop, on October 2, a second massive march was held against the veto and demanding a salary increase and the restitution of the Teacher Incentive Fund.
“A model system in Latin America”
Mario Sequeira, general secretary of the Federation of University Teachers (FEDUN), points out elDiario.es the magnitude of the conflict: “Society is interested in defending the university because it guarantees upward mobility. It is a model system in Latin America. We have already moved on to another instance of the struggle: we take the position of the trenches to recover what was lost in salaries, but this transcends salaries: we defend the universities from a plan of destruction. Several teachers have had to resign and turn to the private sphere. “Technological careers are being emptied of teachers, it is very worrying.”
The exodus of university professors from public to private institutions is already raising alarm bells. In just two faculties of the University of Buenos Aires, Agronomy and Veterinary Medicine, 78 professors left this year. A full-time teaching salary in these faculties is around 800,000 pesos per month (750 euros).
Sequeira, the first graduate in his family, adds that “this Government not only fails to fulfill its commitments to public education, but also attacks the rectors and treats them as thieves.”
Milei has focused its position on audits of universities, casting a pall of suspicion on the allocation of public funds received by study houses. “This commotion is taking a noble cause, like the university, and hiding the jobs [delitos] of criminals,” said the ultra president in an event at the former Kirchner Cultural Center, renamed Palacio Libertad. “Why so much trouble because we want to audit them? Who doesn’t want to be audited? “The one who is dirty.”
The universities comply with ordinary internal audits, however, the General Auditor’s Office of the Nation has its review plan pending, which includes several universities. This plan must be approved by a parliamentary commission whose formation has not been completed by the government itself. The National Interuniversity Council maintained that they are being audited and also wonder why the president eliminated the transparency resolution and does not complete the body that has to audit it.
The university community promises to continue the protest. This Thursday a national strike was held with 95% participation throughout the country. The next strikes will be Monday and Tuesday, as part of the plan announced by the Trade Union Front, made up of teaching and non-teaching unions. In several provinces such as Mendoza, Corrientes, San Luis, Tucumán and La Pampa, public classes, mobilizations and activities were also held to make the conflict visible.
Next Wednesday at noon, when the Budget and Finance Commission of the Chamber of Deputies debates the 2025 budget, public classes will be held in all the universities of the country. An open radio will also be installed in front of Congress, the epicenter every Wednesday of the complaints of the different sectors hit by the cuts.
To all this, the Minister of Security, Patricia Bullrich, accused the university students of wanting to lead a rebellion similar to the one that occurred in Chile, which in 2006 had the epicenter in the protests of the secondary schools and in 2009 and 2011 of the university students. For the minister who has been leading the repression of protesters, especially against retirees, “what they (students and teachers) are doing is a provocation that they want to take to the limit” and “the objective is to generate a revolt and try to destabilize” .
In Chile, the current president, Gabriel Boric, who was a student leader in the 2011 protests to demand a “public, free and quality” university, has presented a bill to forgive the debts of thousands of university students. Unlike Milei.
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