(Modified) Argentina Tour, "Fulbright" style: Stop V, Corrientes, a Private Institution

Nearly my entire life, from my earliest school days in kindergarten to my college graduation a little over a year ago, I have lived amidst, learned within and benefited from the education system in the United States. I will be the first person to tell you that our education system, of course like any other, isn't flawless and has its fair share of shortfalls. (If you haven't seen the documentary Waiting for Superman, you should.) Internationally, each education system is unique and has strengths and benefits that it reaps for students, especially for those participants who decide to take full advantage of educational opportunities available. As I am a bit of a self-proclaimed nerd, you can imagine my excitement as I arrived in Argentina and pondered the possibilities of learning about Argentina's pubic education system notable for being free and obligatory in elementary and high school and free at the collegiate level.

Since I have arrived, I have obviously been teaching at the collegiate level at San Fernando Rey in Resistencia. I also spend each Friday at a local junior high school, Escuela Normal Sarmeinto, helping by occasionally leading class activities and providing additional explanations to students in their language exercises. In today's entry though (and in a sort of modified tour of Argentina's universities that I had been writing about via my visits to other Fulbrighters' institutions), I want to focus on the private sector of Argentina's education system. This entry is written in light of a recent visit I made (at the request of a San Fernando Rey professor who also teaches at this second institution) to the private Universidad de la Cuenca de la Plata (UCP) in Corrientes; sharing about university life and culture in the U.S. as well as my process of learning Spanish in the U.S. were the highlights of the evening's presentation. My audience consisted of a class of students in the Information Technology program who have to take a couple of courses that equip them with English skills necessary to read and understand academic papers and official and/or international manuals and commentaries in the field of Information Technology. *Side note: This curricular requirement of discipline-specific English courses is very common at the university level here as all the important academic writing (for almost all disciplines) is published internationally in English.

This was actually the second time that I had visited La Cuenca for such a presentation and both times I was shocked in a way at the marked differences between this private institution and the other public facilities I have had the chance to visit. Multiple functioning computer labs, what seemed to be a more equipped and updated library, better lighting throughout the facility (which leads to...), a more aesthetically pleasing impression, and a more comprehensive website of greater functionality (when compared to that of San Fernando Rey) are all characteristics that might lead to an initial assumption that education to be found at this private institution is more valuable than that of its public counterparts. And, if we're talking strictly in terms of money to be spent on the education, then yes, you will spend more money at the private institution as education at any public institution is free in Argentina (teacher training institutes, med school, law school, engineering, architecture, business, etc.). In assuming so, however (about educational value), you would be mistaken regarding the principles of educational value. When an individual arrives at a job interview with his/her documentation of a private university education, this person's professional credentials and actual knowledge derived from the education are questioned/doubted. This occurs because the societal assumption (and reality in many private institution programs) is that you have paid someone off to receive your diploma. In the public system, this scenario becomes highly unlikely as there is no exchange of money between students and the educational institution. The professor whose class I visited shared with me that her Information Technology students study in a subject where this direct process of payment in exchange for a diploma is not commonplace but that it is well-known for such payoffs to occur in other courses of study. (I'm still asking myself if I believe her 100 percent...)

As a result of this experience at UCP I ask myself what is the bigger pity here: that the students with the financial resources at the private institutions don't see the necessity or benefit of utilizing the literary and technological resources they have so readily at their fingertips?, or, that there are so many students and professors at the public institutions where I have visited who are yearning and able to have the same access to said resources but don't have the financial means to do so? Dilemma to be debated...anyone?

Finally, as you digest what I've laid on the table in this post, let me reflect for a moment on a question that was raised by one of the UCP students during my presentation. He asked whether public or private institutions in the United States are held in higher regard. After several attempts to explain that this largely depends on the state where the college/university is located, the history of the school, the academic program and the school's resources for that program, professors in the course of study and their research and experience, etc. I was still faced with a certain blank, puzzled stare from many of the students. It was only as I thought back on this question a few days later that I realized my response was probably very difficult for these students to fathom; with such a marked difference in the reputations of public and private institutions in Argentina, my response of "well, it depends on x, y, and z..." was likely much too grey for their black and white educational reality. And so I am left to ponder the complexities of yet another facet of this diverse, essential, powerful practice we call education.