(Entry by Daniel
C. Levy)
PROPHE Summary:
Total costs for Argentina's private higher education students have
risen greatly in the last year. Of the country's 41 private universities,
94 percent raised charges and more than half the institutions effected
increases of between 10 and 20 percent. Moreover, predictions are for
further rises. Heads of top private institutions cite the need to maintain
quality, as in retaining good professors.
Costs for a career now average nearly $20,000, with a range from under
$10,000 to over $68,000. Variation is also large for the same career
in different universities, as with public accountant or administration
in the Catholic University of Santiago of the Estero versus the San
Andres university, or with the Moron university and San Andres in economics.
These career cost differences are on the order of six times. Private
universities hold about 1 in 7 university enrollments. For the study
itself, see
http://www.mecon.gov.ar/secdef/revista/rev73/universidades.pdf.
For the full news article, see Raquel San Martin, La Nacion,
September 9, 2005.
PROPHE Observation:
A study like the one referred to in this news article here is welcome
for providing empirical data on total costs to students. The range of
costs across private universities reflects great differences in status,
quality, and value on the labor market. One of the Latin American countries
relatively late to establish private universities (1959) and quite late
to establish elite ones (since the 1980s), Argentina now boasts some
prestigious private institutions, serving the country's rather privileged
groups. The large differences in institutional cost are common in Latin
America, as are the differences across careers. As in some but no longer
all the region's countries, tuition remains free in the public universities
at the first-degree level, so the public-private "tuition gap"
is large.
