la UBA

I promised Uncle Jeff that I would write more about school so here I go, fulfilling that promise. I am taking one class at the big public university here in Buenos Aires. By big, I mean big. La UBA has 180,000 students. Although it is without a doubt my most difficult class, I also think it is my favorite. Simply, la UBA is the experience that I came for.

Some useful background: (1) UBA is free for all Argentines. The way this works out in practice is that a schmillion people enroll and only a few actually graduate. It takes significant strength of will to overcome all of the bureaucracy/obstacles, especially the ones you're fighting while also holding down a full-time job. (2) From an administrative perspective, cost per student is very low. This is because overhead costs are kept to a bare minimum. Professors barely earn a pittance and almost none are full-time. Buildings are dumpy and inadequate. As a result, striking occurs often (it's happening right now) and school resembles a cross between a prison and a middle school gym, except that it's covered in leftist newspapers and grafitti.

Because of the way the university system is governed, students have a substantial amount of power. The state doles X amount of funding to the university but, from what I understand, does not impose strict restrictions on how that money is spent. In that determination, parties representing the faculty, the students, and I think one other stakeholding group (but not an administration per sé) meet in Congresses to represent their groups and interests. Student government, therefore, is legit and a big deal. Student parties, it follows, are legit and a big deal -- and given that this is Argentina, these student parties are super lefty and very active.



Frequently someone will enter in the middle of class and, upon receiving a nod from the professor, will plunge into a rehearsed 30-60 second spiel about their student party, student congress, student strike, etc etc. I usually have to bite back laughter as I imagine the student who tried that during, say, one of Professor Taliaferro's classes. Oof, it's fighting tears. In those moments, above all, I realize how very far from home I am.


For me, all of this ridiculousness works out swimmingly. Not to sound all Edward Said orientalizing on you or anything but I really dig that UBA is a different world from Tufts, perhaps even in another universe. IFSA handles the internal UBA maze and I get to enjoy the Che Guevara t-shirts and Popular Student Movement posters.