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.
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
Second, the measure bans admissions tests. In the U.S., high school students typically take the ACT or SAT and universities use their test rankings as a key component in deciding whom to admit. Argentina has had similar qualifying exams. The cost of the tests themselves has not been the primary problem: it has been the cost of tutoring and coaching to prepare for the exams.
Well-off students could afford months of expensive private instruction to boost their chances of performing well on the admissions tests. Poor students, of course, could not. Consequently, university admissions began to skew toward the children of affluent Argentinos as these prep courses became more popular.
Now, public universities must admit all students who meet a few very basic requirements, such as graduation from high school, and even that can be waived for older students. It doesn't give new students a "free pass" on everything; they still must perform adequately in their university courses once they are admitted. It levels the playing field and after that every student will still need to study and work hard.
Even with this wide distribution of campuses, zero-cost policy, and minimal requirements for admissions, there are of course challenges still for poor students. The truly poor often must rely on their children's employment to sustain the family so taking time off to attend classes is difficult. Some programs and vocations, for example veterinary medicine, are offered only at certain universities, necessitating relocating to another city and the cost of living there instead of at home with parents. Nevertheless, this move opens up the possibility of a university degree to many more young people than ever before.
Argentina has many problems with its economy, corruption in government, wealth inequality and more. Yet somehow, this developing-world country has managed to provide a system of free education all the way through university for its people. It also has universal health care, with free hospitals in every city and free clinics for vaccinations, preventive care and education, and treatment of routine health problems in most villages. America is still struggling with both issues, propping up the for-profit healthcare and insurance industries on the one hand and undermining public schools to funnel money into for-profit educational rackets on the other.
Perhaps the U.S. could take note of what Argentina's education law declares in its mission statement:
El Estado, al que le cabe responsabilidad indelegable en la prestación del servicio de educación superior de carácter público reconoce y garantiza el derecho a cumplir con ese nivel de la enseñanza a todos aquellos que quieran hacerlo y cuenten con la formación y capacidad requeridas (the State, to whom falls the non-transferable duty to provide public higher education recognizes and guarantees the right to achieve this level of instruction to all those with the required studies and ability who wish to do so).