Argentina is experiencing a process that may be, to date, the largest and most complex conflict of the current government. This process is the "university conflict".
Why do I call it "conflict"? It is because it is not merely a question of cash, audit and end. Rather, it is crossed by a large number of diverse factors: economic, class, ideological, political, symbolic and socio-cultural. However, we cannot deal with everything, since in order to be really comprehensive we would have to do a complex fieldwork that would take another time and extension. Therefore, we anticipate to the reader that here we will think about the "university conflict" in the public data, since it is a good basis for thinking about the dispute between the different subjects within the conflict. It is necessary to start by talking about the economic, social and symbolic situation of the youth, since it is the young people who inhabit the university spaces to a large extent.
Starting from the division into social strata used by the National Institute of Statistics and Census (INDEC), it can be observed with data from the EPH of the first quarter of this year (latest available data) that 42.3% of university students come from the 4 deciles of lowest per capita income, and of them, 91% attend public universities. Another interesting fact in this context is that the participation of low-income young people in the university system has tripled in recent decades, from 18% in 1996 to 42% in 2023.
As reflected in the fifth episode of Socio.Podcast (2024) with sociologist Melina Vázquez, we can think that in the tiredness of living in increasingly impoverished living conditions, and with more attacks on youth for being stigmatized as living in a "NiNi", alluding that a large part of the youth does not study and does not work, it is forgotten that there is a large sector that is a "SiSi", that if they study and if they work. The youth are symbolically propped up from the common sense, and in such a way, it is ignored that under precarious living conditions, it is necessary to complement a life of simultaneous work and study.
Another element to take into account is that it is not only the daily poverty and marginalization of young people attending university, but also the precariousness of the study spaces. Beyond touring different faculties, talking to students and having them tell you about their own situations, we found that as the years go by, investment in education is decreasing, and for the 2025 budget it is estimated that national investment in education in 2025 will be 0.88% of GDP, being the lowest of the decade, below what was invested in 2024 (0.91%) and 2023 (1.48%). It is possible to enter the World Bank database, to give an example, and see how far we are from other countries, and not necessarily from the "first world", to realize that the drop in education is a financial blow with serious social consequences for young workers. The importance of investing in education, it must be repeated, is of utmost importance, for several reasons, but we can start from the centrality of education in the social life of individuals. Educational institutions have a strong social mandate to be the ones who guide their populations to knowledge, to critical knowledge and to the construction of better futures, contributing from the place they wish. If educational institutions do not have the necessary tools to fulfill the social mandate assigned to them, can we think that the future ahead of us will be one of livable and dignified lives? Currently, the annual investment per student of a public university is at the lowest levels since 2004 according to data from the Civil Association for Equality and Justice (ACIJ), when in fact we should be investing heavily in knowledge, scientific development and research.
This is the reason for the rage of the student movement, when they refused to invest the 0.14% of the GDP that was estimated to be spent in the education budget that was vetoed. This shows that education is not considered as a social right, but as a market element (Puiggrós; 2010). Nevertheless, the country is in a position to pardon through money laundering all those who have committed tax crimes, or to grant the multinational "MercadoLibre" more than U$S 100 million per year in subsidies from the State, being benefited by the "regime of promotion of companies of the knowledge economy". With education there has to be a change of perspective, and that is to understand that "it is a fundamental human right because it imposes itself on the ungrateful chance of inequality" (CIN, 2024). Therefore, increasingly impoverished youth seek in public educational institutions a desire to dedicate themselves to what they want, as a way out of the precarious living conditions that the neoliberal matrix presents them. To complement what has been written above, in the following table we will see a little of the material situation of the universities:
As can be seen, there is a strong decrease in all elements: payment of teaching and non-teaching salaries, financing for university functioning, investment in strategic careers, in science and technique in Universities, and we could go on.
A final thought. We are witnessing how the State, materially and symbolically, is attacking public education. The data on National Universities are an example. At the same time, those of us who inhabit public institutions are accused of being "Marxists", "communists" and other ideological adjectives. In addition to revealing the ignorance of the corresponding officials, there is a strong intention in all areas of life: to commercialize as much as possible. The university conflict disputes, above all, that not everything is marketable, and that we have social rights, such as the right to education and culture, to have decent jobs and fairer lives. Today the student movement does not think of socialism, communism, to think that this is the degree of consciousness is a total ignorance of the student body. The demand is simple: stop making our lives more precarious.
Sources:
SocioPodcast (2024): Why are young people always to blame? with Melina Vázquez.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/2rvwwqlysJ2uInpAsLQBx8?si=tYCD9dztTXucgvy4RNEGAg
ACIJ (2024) "Análisis de la ejecución presupuestaria del Sistema Universitario Nacional. First Quarter of 2024. https://acij.org.ar/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/ACIJ-Analisis-de-la-Ejecucion-Presupuestaria-del-Sistema-Universitario-Nacional.pdf
https://chequeado.com/el-explicador/estudiantes-universitarios-4-de-cada-10-provienen-de-hogares-de-bajos-ingresos/
https://chequeado.com/el-explicador/el-presupuesto-educativo-de-2025-sera-el-de-menor-participacion-sobre-el-pbi-de-la-ultima-decada/
https://chequeado.com/el-explicador/marcha-federalmarcha-federal-universitaria-cual-es-el-presupuesto-anual-por-estudiante-de-grado-y-pregrado-universitaria-cual-es-el-presupuesto-anual-por-estudiante-de-grado-y-pregrado/
Adriana Puiggrós (2010) De Simón Rodríguez a Paulo Freire. Bs. As: Editorial Colihue
https://www.cin.edu.ar/la-universidad-publica-base-de-la-democracia-y-el-desarrollo-social/ (Consejo Interuniversitario Nacional, 2024)
https://www.argentina.gob.ar/sites/default/files/sintesis_2022-_2023.pdf (Síntesis de Información Estadística Universitaria)
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