Students and professors from Argentine public universities on Tuesday redoubled pressure on the government of Javier Milei in their demand to improve the budget and university salaries, occupying study houses and giving public classes in the streets.
Groups of students are holding or carrying out other types of protests in dozens of faculties of the University of Buenos Aires (UBA), the most recognized and busiest in the country, and other universities, after voting on the measure in assemblies held on Monday. .
Teachers and students installed blackboards and chairs on public roads and held classes that way.
The students were planning their next steps during the rest of a week of mobilizations in which they will show their rejection of the adjustment policies of the ultraliberal president.
Meanwhile, the Trade Union Front of National Universities, which represents teachers, called for a national strike on Thursday, as it did last week.
Pablo Evelson, dean of the Faculty of Pharmacy at the UBA, told the press that although some university facilities have been taken over, “classes continue to be taught” on public roads.
Pablo Herrera, who taught a class on the street, told AP that “this is the worst situation” that he has experienced in his 15 years as a professor at the Faculty of Economic Sciences at the UBA.
Delfina Pasos, a student at that faculty, stated that “it was time to go out and protest with public classes, with symbolic hugs” to the institutions.
The conflict between Milei and the university sector began about six months ago and intensified last week when the president managed to sustain in Congress the veto he had imposed on the law to improve teachers’ salaries and the university budget, considering that It put the balance of public accounts at risk.
Milei stated in a journalistic interview that “the public university is not under discussion here” but questioned that the University Financing Law that he rejected did not contemplate with which funds to cover these improvements and confirmed that he will not give up his determination to preserve the “zero deficit” .
The president, who has carried out the largest spending adjustment in the country’s recent history, pointed out that any increase in university items can be raised during the next discussion in Congress of the budget for 2025, specifying where the funds will come from.
“What I’m saying is ‘ok, here you have the budget, look how you want to reallocate it’… but there is a restriction which is the zero financial deficit,” the president stated.
The National Interuniversity Council denounced that 70% of teaching and non-teaching salaries “are below the poverty line; the allocated amounts are not even sufficient for the minimum maintenance of the infrastructure… the continuity of university scholarships, the only instrument to build equal opportunities, and no investment is made in research, science and technology.”
The loss of purchasing power of teachers’ salaries is producing a flight of teachers to the private sector.
The price increase between January and September was 101.6%.
The government has faced two massive street demonstrations demanding policies that ensure the proper functioning of the more than 70 public universities and colleges.
The law that Milei vetoed provided for a retroactive recomposition of the budget and salaries to counteract inflation since December.
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