Although gauchos (cowboys) still roam the pampa in traditional garb and milongas (dance clubs) smolder with the fateful passion of tango, Argentina is also a thoroughly modern country. Its economy is mixed, with agriculture, industry and services all contributing to its position as the third largest in Latin America. A modern society requires an educated populace and education has long been highly esteemed in this southernmost nation of the Americas.
Public primary and secondary education for children has been free, secular and compulsory since 1884. Higher education at public universities has been free of tuition since 1918. As a result, Argentina has the second most educated populace in Latin America (after Cuba), comparable to many European nations.The Peronista government of outgoing president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner nevertheless has not believed that good is good enough. Cristina and the Congress enacted new legislation last week to extend the opportunity of a university degree to even more citizens (and non-citizens as well, since foreign students do not pay tuition either). The new law (in Spanish and in English) makes two key changes to the current legal structure governing public universities, the Ley de Educación Superior (Law of Higher Education) of 1995.
First, it prohibits any and all non-tuition fees at public universities. As we know in the U.S., state-funded universities have often found ways to charge students and parents a boatload of money, without calling it tuition: student services fee, campus facilities fee, instruction fee, orientation fee, application fee and so on ad infinitum. When non-tuition fees still amount to thousands of dollars per year, it seems duplicitious to refer to a state university as being "free."
Argentina has suffered some of the same "fee creep" over the years, although the actual amounts have been far less than in the U.S. in line with the lower cost of living here. Still, these fees have created barriers to higher education for young people from poor families. Public universities now may not charge any fee whatsoever to a student.
Continued below the tuition-free orange university mascot