Argentine President Javier Milei won the elections wielding a chainsaw to symbolize the brutal cuts to public spending he promised to make. Defining himself as a mole who has taken over management of the state to destroy it from within, the president has taken fiscal adjustment to unthinkable limits. His budget cuts affect many of the basic functions of the state: an 81 percent fall in public investment in infrastructure, a 50 percent decline in national spending on health, a 48 percent reduction in funding for education, and a 30 percent drop in payments to retirees.
All of these decisions generated disputes in Congress and in the streets, but it was the cut in spending for public universities that unleashed a powerful and sustained response to Milei's government throughout the country.
In 2024, Argentina’s 66 national universities suffered a 68 percent reduction in their incomes, leading to the risk that some institutions will have to close their doors. The first big mobilization against these cuts took place on April 23, when close to a million people took to the streets to demand an improvement in the budget. Although the government updated spending on maintenance—only 10 percent of total expenditures—teachers' incomes suffered a significant deterioration. The decline in salaries for teachers is 30 percent so far this year.
In September, Argentina’s Congress passed a law guaranteeing financing for all public universities. Milei, in turn, vetoed the law despite a national outcry in support of public education. The government’s budget for next year outlines a new decrease in funding for national universities, estimated at 5.2 percent on average.
Since then, the crisis has worsened and the response by universities was not long in coming. Professors began with one-day strikes, which were repeated week after week. Last October 10, once the veto of the law was announced, there was a larger mobilization than the one in April to demand that the government increase the amount allocated to universities and guarantee their normal functioning. To make this demand visible, students occupied 30 universities throughout the country without suspending academic activities, organizing public classes in the streets while carrying out actions open to the wider community.
The funding cuts to universities impact both the living conditions of educators and educational processes and outcomes. Lucas Rozenmacher, a teacher and researcher in the Department of Culture at the General Sarmiento National University, says that this year alone rents have increased by 70 percent and transportation costs to the university increased seven fold at the beginning of the year, while his income increased only slightly. “What I also notice with students” observes Rozenmacher, “is that they are having a hard time covering the cost of transportation without getting informal jobs to earn some extra money, because it is very difficult to make ends meet.”
Carlos Acha, a CONICET researcher and physics professor at the University of Buenos Aires, describes the impact of the budget reduction on his department. “We are research professors, and the research we do impacts the quality of the classes. If there is less money for professors and support staff, the projects shrink and prevent us from incorporating young graduates. Many of them are going abroad because they can't afford to live in Argentina.”
Far from recognizing this loss of income, the government offered only a minimal increase in teachers’ salaries. Professors swiftly rejected the offer, making the situation tense. The government accused university authorities, who are also professors, of being corrupt and using the resources to support the opposition and for their personal benefit.
The History of University Resistance
Argentina’s public universities, which are free and open to everyone, have been sites of important political struggles for more than 100 years. In 1918, in the province of Córdoba, a great movement took place known as the University Reform. The achievements of this struggle included university autonomy, co-government by teachers and students, the democratization of access, freedom of expression, and academic freedom, among others.
The political process that led to Juan Perón’s presidency in 1946 brought the struggle for the democratization of access to education to popular sectors. Thus, free university education and the responsibility of the state in its financing were firmly established.
In 1956, the dictatorship that overthrew Perón encouraged the creation of private universities, promoting the interests of the Catholic Church in intervening in higher education. The proposal was opposed by a large sector of the student population in a three-year process known as “Laica o libre,” secular or free, which included confrontations between students and the expulsion of opponents within different faculties.
The dictatorship installed in 1966 targeted the University of Buenos Aires, and in the face of resistance from teachers and researchers, the police violently entered five faculties. Known as “The Night of the Long Batons,” the event resulted in 300 people being wounded and 400 detained, leading to the exile of 700 of the country's most important scientists.
During the last dictatorship, in 1981, the government attempted to charge university student fees, but even under a repressive regime students refused to pay them. The resistance involved the public burning of the payment books, after which the government desisted from instituting fees.
In March 2001, months before the economic crisis that led to the fall of the government, the Minister of Economy, Ricardo López Murphy, announced a plan that included a five percent cut in the university budget. Students and teachers demonstrated massively to resist this measure until the new official resigned only 15 days later.
Attacks on resources and freedom within public universities have always triggered strong responses from teachers, students, and workers. To understand these struggles, it is necessary to look not only at economic indicators, but also to understand the meaning of the free public university for citizens.
The University as a Symbol
Why has the defense of public education always had so much political impact and overwhelming support from sectors that are not directly linked to it? According to Alejandro Grimson, an Anthropology professor and researcher on political cultures and identities, the 1918 University Reform opened the university to the first period of democratization. Later, when Peronism made it free, “the idea was installed that equal opportunities are based on access to higher education,” says Grimson. “Therein lies the project of upward social mobility, the project of a country of middle classes. Therefore, to wipe out the public university is to wipe out that dream.”
For Dora Barrancos, a sociologist and feminist historian, “the importance of higher education for groups of women in the popular sectors and for gender diversity is enormous.” Although an opening to the broader incorporation of women into universities occurred in the 1960s, it mainly reached urban and middle-class women. “The giant leap in the admissibility of women from the popular sectors has occurred in the last two decades thanks to the creation of university centers in the provinces,” notes Barrancos. Currently, more women than men enter and graduate from national universities. More than 30 percent of them are in charge of domestic labor and have children or dependents. Closing or shrinking universities prevents these women from acquiring tools to improve their living conditions at home.
Brunella Traballoni, a participant in the student resistance movement at the National University of the Province of Río Negro says everyone must be involved in the struggle.“We are inviting all of society to participate in these classes — our friends, our mothers, our fathers, our brothers, because we feel that our dreams, our history, and our rights are being taken away from us.”
Education and Poverty
At the end of September, official data on conditions of poverty in Argentina was released. Although the economic situation for families has been worsening for eight years, the first semester of Milei's administration saw an unprecedented decline in family incomes: poverty increased from 41.7 percent to 52.9 percent of the population, the highest rate since the economic and social crisis of 2001.
Milei's rejection of the university financing law took place in this context. For Grimson, this decision will have long-term consequences. “In the university case they have made a complete mistake,” he says. “In public opinion studies it stands out that this is an attack against a core of society's aspirations, something that is at the center of the imaginary of the Argentine identity.”
The president has deployed different arguments in his attempt to discredit public universities. The most recent one claims that the university is only attended by young people from the richest sectors of the country, thanks to taxes paid by the poorest. However, 42 percent of university students in Argentina come from households below the poverty line. The worsening situation of poverty, also associated with the informal employment that most young people have to rely on, makes the conditions for study very unfavorable. The reduction in funding aggravates the situation by reducing the number and amount of scholarships intended to facilitate educational opportunities for those most in need.
The recent cuts reveal a new phenomenon in the link between education and poverty: most professors from the intermediate ranks, many of whom are dedicated exclusively to teaching and research, earn salaries below the poverty line. Therefore, they look for jobs in private universities or outside the country. So far this year, the department of agronomy has lost 30 professors, the veterinary faculty lost 48 professors, and the pre-university colleges more than 50. According to the dean of the school of Pharmacy and Biochemistry, the department has lost 20 percent of its teaching staff in 2024.
Universities are privileged spaces for scientific research. When funding is frozen — reaching the extreme case of the National Agency for the Promotion of Research, Technological Development, and Innovation, which has not spent a single peso of its available funds so far this year—this impacts not only the incomes of research professors, but also the possibility of sustaining teaching. “We have an increase in the number of students and we have no budget for the necessary material for experimental classes, fundamental for students to learn new techniques,” explains Acha. Argentina is a leader in scientific research in Latin America. The nation’s five Nobel Prize winners are graduates of public universities, three of them in biomedical and biochemical sciences.
As the struggle has intensified, Milei and his ministerial team respond only with aggression. The Minister of Security, Patricia Bullrich, affirmed: “They want to generate a revolt in the Chilean model, when they broke and destroyed everything. It is clear to us that they are going to go after this with Molotov cocktails.” Meanwhile, the chief of the cabinet, Guillermo Francos, associated the student activists with the armed movements of the 60s, and the Minister of Economy, without saying who or how, assured that “we know that they are stealing the money.”
The government, which is waiting for the end of classes to calm down the resistance, has assured that no changes will be made. But teachers and students maintain the struggle. For Grimson, Argentina has a tradition of long-standing struggles, including that of the Mothers and Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, and it is possible that these attacks on the core interests of the middle classes can continue to be resisted. “These young men and and women who are the protagonists of the struggle in defense of the public university are going to create the best tools not only to defend it, but to reinvent it, empower it, and multiply it,” says Grimson.
In Defense of Education
I attended high school at a university college. I have been a student and professor at the University of Buenos Aires; I was a teacher's representative during a long strike in 1986 to demand salaries; I am a graduate, and a few years ago I earned a master's degree. A few months ago, 40 years passed since I met my life partner in the first extracurricular course I taught. My life has been marked by the university, but there is something more that symbolizes the meaning of the university in Argentina.
I obtained my only undergraduate degree at the age of 46. My three siblings had been graduates for a long time and it was not a novelty in my family. But that night, when I called my father to tell him that, after so many years and various studies, I had obtained my degree, he began to cry uncontrollably without saying a word. He was more emotional than I had ever seen him. Although I had managed to develop myself without a university degree, this news brought something more important: the pride of a son of immigrants, who worked from a very young age, to have a son who had completed a degree. The symbolic value of study is much greater than the potential for economic development This is also the reason why we are fighting today to defend education in Argentina.
Daniel Cholakian is a sociologist and journalist specializing in Latin America.
