Berkley Center

One of the advantages of my study abroad program in Buenos Aires is the range of universities from which we can choose classes. From the public and prestigious University of Buenos Aires (UBA) to the artsy National University Institute of Art to the higher-end, private Catholic University of Argentina (UCA), the array of courses offered to exchange students is almost endless. During our orientation week, our study-abroad program advised us about the various university settings we would encounter in each of these options. Wishing to witness as many of these environments as possible, I opted to take a class at each of our choices.

I thought I understood the majority of differences between private and public universities in the United States prior to arriving in Argentina. My identity as a Hoya seemed to encompass many, if not most, of the characteristics typical to the standard private, religious American university. Similarly, through undergraduate experiences with both my sister and my friends, I had sat in classes and experienced Greek life at the University of Florida. Therefore, upon arriving at my first class at both UBA and UCA, I maintained similar expectations for both environments.

To say I was wrong about both these environments would be quite an understatement. In the same day, I traversed across the beautiful monster of Buenos Aires to my first day of class at both universities. I was not prepared for the reaction I would receive. UCA classes, despite their academic difficulty, socially tend to resemble middle or high-school frenzies in which students speak while the professors give lectures, and slang is generally used and accepted. Additionally, the only trace of Catholicism whatsoever was the occasional priest I would see walking on his way to class or a poster at the beginning of the hallway encouraging students to pray the rosary. Where were the crosses in every classroom like those I was accustomed to seeing at Georgetown?

With a slightly confused swagger, I was off to my first UBA class. Once there, I found the academic environment I had been expecting at UCA but with students from all walks of life. With the understanding that UCA was a more professional environment, I dressed in semi-professional wear that day which would not normally turn heads on the Hilltop. The second I entered my UBA classroom, all of the students looked at me and instantly asked me what my nationality was.

Furthermore, the class went on with a much more professional pace and intensity; mutual respect between the student and professor was a given. The only awkward moment I found was when the topic of the Church’s control of condom use (the class is an AIDS seminar) in the 1990s affected governmental policy. Why was this objective question scrutinized so harshly by the students?

This stereotypical first-day confusion prompted me to investigate more into the role of religion in Argentine higher education. With a self-reported 90 percent of the population identifying as Roman Catholic, Argentina clearly fits the Latin American pattern that has existed since the original Iberian colonization. Despite this relatively high amount of Catholics, religious universities are few within this South American country.

So far I have only discovered the existence of eight religious universities, all of which are Catholic. Within this small set, only one seems to have had a strong impact on its physical and academic surroundings: the National University of Córdoba, originally founded by the Jesuits in 1610, and secularized at the time of the revolution against Spain. From this institution, Argentina’s second-largest city was founded.

For a country that still has a de facto official religion (until 1994, the Constitution required the president and vice-president to be Catholic, and the government still has several official as well as unofficial ties with the Roman Catholic Church), I was surprised by this finding. Surely a country like Argentina should have more religious universities than the “secular” United States, right?

I decided to prompt this conversation with one of the UCA students one day after class. She responded that she did not really understand why it exists, much less about its Catholic roots, and informed me that the last time she had heard the word iglesia was after her confirmation.

Like the rest of the globalized world, Argentina is an increasingly secular society. Despite a history marked by active Church participation and occasional intervention within the government, the only trace of its existence would be the vast amount of cathedrals and parishes within Buenos Aires and other large cities. Religion seems to be completely absent in post-secondary Argentine education despite its vibrant past.

While I have not yet been able to understand this phenomenon completely, I hope my final two months here will help illuminate this seemingly paradoxical existence; perhaps then my seemingly American-centric questions will be answered.