Opinion Sur Joven

“Ruth Benedict tells that in Vancouver Island, natives organized tournaments to measure the greatness of their princes. Rivals would compete against them destroying their belongings: they threw to the fire their boats, fish oil and salmon eggs, and from a promontory they threw the princes’ pottery and blankets to the sea. The winner was the one who would get rid of everything”. [1]

Since the first Pedagogic Congress in 1882 which brought about the Public Education Law (Law 1420) in Argentina, schools have turned into a tool for the transmission of rules, values and knowledge, allowing people from very different environments and social classes to share a common basis and future opportunities. It became the pillar from which Argentinean society developed, based on the values of justice and equity.

In Argentina, universities have been free since 1949 and over the decades, this has led to controversy and debate over the role and rights of the State. Although free education continues, opposition persists.

Can parents ask their children to repay for the costs of raising them? Education should be understood as a fundamental right as established in The Universal Declaration of Human Rights that states the right to receive education, obligatory and free, at least, over the essential stages: Children will be given a useful cultural education that allows them to have equal opportunities, develop their skills, personal judgment, moral and social responsibility in an attempt to become a useful member of the society, [2]. It’s in this sense that tuition-free public universities (from now on, “Public Universities”) play a significant role regarding equity and justice.

Fortunately, Argentina maintains public universities despite the continuous struggle to keep this condition: those studying at the public universities in Argentina know that many teachers work ad honorem and almost out of budget. Also students have to stage protests to make their voice heard.

Every child in Argentina has the right to access to higher education, from Jujuy to Tierra del Fuego. The state must support that right since university degrees will not only mean a benefit for graduates but for the whole society. Then, the task of making education more accessible to the poor children of Jujuy, a province in northern Argentina where access to education is very limited, will be in the hands of politics and society.

Some history

In 1949, free education was introduced in Argentina, making it possible for the growing middle class to have access to education, which was an unthinkable right until then. University system was phased in over the following years in a period characterized by the creation of new universities, a growing number of students and teachers, and an increase in the number of graduates. However, the evolution of the educational system failed to comply with the needs of the higher income classes, and overextended its base to become overcrowded. Higher education started having an increasingly cultural value and was redefined as a right for every citizen, so universities became free and open to the public.

In the late 80s, the federal government gave rise to a new era of private university expansion. Today, the number of private institutions is larger than the public despite the growth in these institutions over the same period. Since 1989, 11 public, 1 provincial and 31 private universities were opened. Currently, the educational system is comprised of 94 institutions: 42 public and 52 private universities. This has led to a new sort of problems related to access, equity, accreditation, coordination, evaluation and control.

Over the last decades, the World Bank in Latin America has recommended the revaluation of higher education to be more aligned with the market. The World Bank Education and Social Policy Department has suggested that public universities introduce incentives in order to diversify their sources of financing. “International Credit Institutions state that the reform of the educational system has to be carried out according to the market economy, from which signals indicate where there lies value is and what are the benefits ”. [3].

The reform proposals are centered on market forces: specifically the privatization and decentralization of public functions.

With regards to evaluation and control, over the last decade public and private institutional evaluation agencies, and graduate and postgraduate degrees, have emerged across the region, whose objective is to improve the quality of education.

In Argentina it is the [National Commission for University Evaluation and Accreditation (CONEAU, in Spanish)- http://www.coneau.edu.ar/index.php?idioma=en] a public institution that plays this control role. CONEAU is a decentralized agency under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Education. Its mission is to ensure and enhance the quality of university degrees and institutions in the Argentine university system through the evaluation and accreditation. This institution represents an important reform of the education system management, as important as the regulatory public bodies controlling the privatization process that took place in Argentina.

Hence, higher education was cross-cut by concepts applied to the business management field like evaluation, efficiency, development of business units, postgraduate courses accreditation, product evaluation, supply and demand internacionalization, educational globalization, access restrictions (admission tests implying limited access), management techniques biased towards administrative and cost profiles, “alternative” financing (shrouded tariffs through “voluntary” contributions).

In this debate two groups stand out: the sector from the Left which resists the application of tariffs on the basis that introducing the concept of profits into the educacional field will affect its property, financing, and/or supply. On the other side, economic liberalism supporters allege that higher education benefits mean a higher income to degree holders because of a higher qualification (“educational income”).

However, this position does not take into account the social benefits that graduates provide to the country. They stress the advantage of the degree holder and see the student as an economic agent related to the university as customer-client.

From university to companies

The first technological transfer from universities to companies was in 1984 when the Office of Technology Transfer (OTT, in Spanish) was created in the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET, in Spanish). The OTT was the first technology linking management experience introduced in a scientific and technical organization, establishing for the first time a paid-consulting system for researchers in which the consulting projects that are performed for companies would be registered in that Office.

These scientific policy instruments try to direct research to the production of knowledge, with the idea to receive financing from private companies an attempt to fill the financing gap universities are suffering from as a consequence of privatization.

This will change the focus of future research owing to the fact that companies will push research to the needs of their productive systems.

I personally think that although communication between private companies and free universities are highly enriching, they should not try to change each other. It is in this sense that public universities could turn into a for-profit institutions.

However, both public and private universities now find themselves with the need to revise their mechanisms of knowledge creation because their problems are not only limited to financing but also to institutional decisions concerning the role of university in society. That is to say, its role, not only in regards to self-sufficiency or survival, but also its educational function for the benefit of all, is unachievable without access.

In the beginning of this article I shared with you a story by Eduardo Galeano about dispossession that leads us to different interpretations of capitalism when the possession of goods seems to be a fundamental necessity. What would happen if we destroy all material goods? What would happen to all the inmaterial goods we acquired? What would remain of our education?

Even if we would throw our books to the fire, the knowledge would remain with us.

Education and knowledge are stronger than any material possession and, although it will help us work in the area of our liking and achieve a means of subsistence; they will always be beyond any tangible good.