by Facundo Iglesia and Valen Iricibar

President Javier Milei is set to veto a university funding increase bill as thousands protested against government budget cuts in the higher education sector.

It’s the second nationwide university march Milei took office in December 2023. The first happened in April, also protesting budget cuts and calling for salary increases for professors and university staff as the lights went out.

In mid-September, Argentina’s Senate passed legislation securing all university personnel bimonthly raises based on inflation. Less than 24 hours later, Milei said he would block it on the grounds that it goes against his primary goal of balancing Argentina’s books.

“After the first march there was a response from the government as it updated operating costs, which had been frozen for more than a year,” said Jhon Boretto, dean of the National University of Córdoba. However, he said that negotiating salaries, which represent 90% of the university budget, became more difficult. 

“That conversation was cut short, there was no agreement,” Boretto said. “The truth is that today, if we compare the month of December to date, university salaries lost more than 50% compared to inflation — which implies in terms of loss of purchasing power more than 30%,” he told the Herald.

Boretto added that the law slated to be vetoed by the president aimed to restore that loss and gave the discussion of the 2025 budget a better starting point. He said that it would “not jeopardize the fiscal balance.” 

“The cost of what is foreseen in the law, it represents 10% of the fiscal surplus that the government reported that it managed to accumulate up to August of this year,” Boretto told the Herald.

Wednesday’s march was called on September 24 by the National Inter-University Council (CIN, by its Spanish initials), the Argentine University Federation, and unions grouping professors and university staff.

“This march reminds me a lot of the feeling of when we won the World Cup — it is a very crude comparison, but we Argentines are united in the streets which, at the end of the day, is how things are achieved,” Juliana Gómez, a 19-year-old anthropology student told the Herald during the massive march in Buenos Aires. 

Gómez, who studies at the National Buenos Aires University (UBA), was joined by her friend Joaquín Sorsini, who studies at a private university. “Even though I do not attend a public university, I believe that everyone should have access to education,” he said.

Lucía Lazarte was holding a sign saying she was the first generation in her family to study at a university. Her thirteen-year-old daughter was holding a sign saying “I want to be the second.”

“Public education makes for a people that can have a say, knows what it wants, grows, evolves. Without education we do not evolve,” said Lazarte, adding that access to free university education is key to upward social mobility. Regarding Milei’s famous saying no hay plata (“There is no money”) she told the Herald. “You can cut down on some things, but education is the future — and you cannot cut down the future.”