College graduates are turning onArgentina's Milei after helping him win power

By Patrick Gillespie
Bloomberg News / The Tribune Content Agency
Updated December 14, 2024 8:33 PM


Patricio Aguilar just wants to go to class. The 23-year-old agriculture student voted for Javier Milei last year but now has a front-row seat as the president’s deep spending cuts reverberate through Argentina. While Aguilar still stands behind his ballot — Milei is crushing inflation and eliminating chronic deficits, as promised — he and his peers at the University of Buenos Aires and other public colleges increasingly disapprove of the libertarian economist after largely backing his presidential bid a year ago.

Milei vilifies poorly paid faculty, accusing them of indoctrinating students with woke ideas. He also cut professor pay by more than a fifth when adjusted for inflation, to its lowest level in at least a decade. That income hit is extra painful given the president’s other policies have doubled or even tripled the cost of living.

Though he can’t stand Milei’s leftist predecessors, and doesn’t support the protests that have erupted over the cuts, Aguilar understands the anger about the president. “He went overboard with the austerity, it had to be more gradual,” Aguilar said. “Now it’s clearly getting out of hand, just by all the strikes.” The situation, he added, “lowered the positive image I had of the government.”

Tuition-free universities are a point of pride in Argentina. The country’s higher education system has produced five Nobel Prize winners and is the building block of its well-educated workforce. But it’s now underperforming in Latin America after ballooning in size over the past two decades. Students, faculty and policymakers broadly agree change is needed, but how much and how fast have hit a societal nerve.

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