“Okay, wait, so you actually have to pay to go to your school in the United States?”
“Yes, but I get scholarships to help me.”
“That’s not the point. You have to pay to learn. You don´t just have to be smart enough to get in? How is that allowed?”
Above is a translated excerpt from a conversation I recently had with one of my classmates at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA). This student’s confusion mirrors my own when I step into the crowded halls at the university's Santiago de Estero campus every week. Even after two months, the demographics and day-to-day workings of my adoptive university leave me pondering questions far beyond those sparked inside the classroom. In fact, some of the most interesting things I’ve learned have come not from my fellow students.
At UBA, education is free. The view is that if you are smart enough to get into the best university in Argentina, you should get to learn there without bearing any financial burden. Quality higher education is not a privilege, but a right. This right upheld by UBA visually manifests itself in the demographics of its student body. I only have two classes at the university, but they bring together some of the most diverse collections of people of which I’ve ever been a part. Individuals from all walks of life fill the benches of my lectures. The age spectrum in my classes alone spans from late teens/early twenties all the way to men and women in their sixties. It’s a common thing for classes to start a few minutes late to allow those coming from jobs to arrive. Working towards a degree at the UBA is a process to be taken slowly while one lives his or her life, not to be taken as a set section of one’s life that is never returned to again. Many of the staff members working at the offices of my study abroad program, for example, are finishing degrees at UBA while they work for the program. Others have finished but choose to stay with the program rather than actively apply their degrees. This isn’t to say they are throwing away the education they worked hard to receive. On the contrary, I think it demonstrates the difference in the way Argentines and we in the United States view a college degree.
Spend any amount of time at UBA, observing things akin to what I’ve described, and you can’t help but get the feeling that the idea that learning is a life-long process is more literally understood here than it is in the United States. Students admitted to the Argentine university have both a right to be there and a right to finish their degrees regardless of how many times life chooses to intervene and force them to pause, or how many years it took them to gain admission. I find these beliefs particularly interesting coming from a school with such a strong pre-professional atmosphere as Georgetown has.
At Georgetown, more often than not, university education is viewed as a stepping stone to a successful career and fulfilling life, not as part of either of those things. As much as I understand the American view of universities and agree with the obvious need to be qualified in order to do a job, I can’t help but admire the Argentine view of the perpetual student. Nor can I help but wonder if with this mindset, Argentine students get something out of their university educations that I and my fellow American peers might lack: a true joy of learning for knowledge’s sake. Of course, in the United States we are encouraged to figure out what we like while in college rather than before we begin as they do in Argentina. Nonetheless, that preliminary dabbling is still done with the mindset that once you find what you like, you’ll study it so that you can do it professionally when you graduate. It is not done because learning as much as you can, about as many things as you can, while you have the opportunity to do so, is a chance not to be squandered; this fact makes me a little bit sad for us American students. Maybe we should take a hint from our Argentine counterparts and really take to heart the fact that one should never stop seeking out knowledge no matter how many minutes, or years for that matter, late to class you might arrive.
Katie Jane Morgan graduated from the Walsh School of Foreign Service in 2015 with a major in culture and politics. Originally from Houston, Texas, she participated in the Berkley Center's Junior Year Abroad Network during the spring 2014 semester, which she spent studying in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
