The president of Argentina, Javier Milei, stated this Saturday that public universities, the axis of a growing conflict in the country, only serve the “children of the rich” and demanded that they be audited.
“The uncomfortable truth about Argentine education is that the national public university today serves no one except the children of the upper class and the rich and the upper middle class,” Milei said at an event.
The president stated that tests show that 40% of primary school students have poor performance in Language and Mathematics and eight out of ten students in middle or secondary education have reading-comprehension problems.
He noted that added to this is the fact that seven out of ten children from 0 to 14 years old are poor.
Therefore, according to his reasoning, it is wrong to put the “focus” on university education when “there are problems with the formation of basic human capital because children do not eat and then cannot study.”
«In a country where the vast majority of children are poor and do not know how to read, write or perform a basic mathematical operation, the myth of free university becomes a subsidy from the poor to the rich, whose children are the only ones who They go to university,” he said.
Milei recently vetoed a law that guaranteed greater financing for national public universities, attended by nearly 2 million students, which has deepened the conflict between the Government and the professors, students and authorities of the higher education institutions.
Students have taken over the headquarters of several faculties, while teachers have called for a new strike for next week.
According to Milei, “the university has stopped being a tool for social mobility and has become an obstacle to it.”
He assured that “it is not in dispute that the university is public and free, but that the resources are scarce and that, under any slogan, stealing is always wrong,” which is why he called for auditing the universities to “end the leaks of the money that enters to the university.
Milei made these statements at an event to formalize the change of the name of the Kirchner Cultural Center (CCK) of Buenos Aires to the Palacio Libertad and Domingo Faustino Sarmiento Cultural Center.
According to the Government, the name change decreed by Milei last Thursday seeks to commemorate the inauguration of Domingo Faustino Sarmiento as president of Argentina on October 12, 1868.
Sarmiento (1811-1888), who governed Argentina between 1868 and 1874, was a politician, member of the Liberal Party (center-right, nationalist), writer and teacher.
The building that houses the cultural center that now bears his name was inaugurated in 1928 as the headquarters of the Palace of Post Office and Telecommunications.
After enormous restoration and remodeling work, it was inaugurated by then-president Cristina Fernández (2007-2015) in May 2010 as the Bicentennial Cultural Center and renamed in November 2012 as the Kirchner Cultural Center (CCK), in tribute to the former president. Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007), who had died in October 2010.
Considered one of the largest cultural centers in Latin America, among its most important attractions, it has a concert hall called ‘La Ballena Azul’, which has a capacity for almost 2,000 people and excellent acoustics; a dome from which you can see the city of Buenos Aires, and ‘The Great Lamp’, a glazed and hanging structure supported by a framework of beams.
The building, which has a total area of 100,000 square meters, depends on the Ministry of Culture, which lost its status as a ministry under the Milei Executive. EFE
#Milei #affirms #public #university #serves #children #rich
