Today was the first day that we travelled to the University of Austral Pilar campus where we spent the day learning about the university as well as the teaching hospital attached to it. We also spent some time after some of our lectures doing a brief tour around the campus and was able to see a building of undergraduate studies from majors or as they call it “careers” ranging anywhere from engineering to design. After the lectures we did a bus tour where we were able to see all of downtown Buenos Aires. The lectures that we had before our tour consisted of a series of 3 speakers all who were representatives of Austral and who spoke about innovation of the hospital, the university itself, and history of hospital and school. These lectures were informative, yet also a good indicator of what is to come in the next two weeks. 

During our visit today, I was able to see that Austral university differed from the University of Pittsburgh in that it was a more rural university located about an hour outside of downtown Buenos Aires. While in Pittsburgh we are still located out of the downtown setting a quick bus ride will place you downtown. Differences in enrollment also differ as Austral, a private university, has around 6,000 students whereas the University of Pittsburgh has around 20,000 undergrads alone. However, this size difference is a direct result of the establishment and rate of growth that each university has undergone, but does not come close to the 400,000 students who attend the University of Buenos Aires. Austral was only established less than 50 years ago while on the other hand the University of Pittsburgh has had time to not only become more established in their programs, but also grow their enrollment. The differences in each universities age is a big contributor to the resources that they have access to, seen at Austral as they are still adding buildings to their campus. The expansion of the campus itself has allowed Austral to begin to offer more majors such as one of their recently initiated careers concentrating on Nutrition, however they plan to add even more careers to the 64+ they offer now. Despite size, both universities compare in that they both continually take steps to expand both the size of the university in regard to students and programs offered. Many of the programs that currently exist at both universities appear to be very similar in their nature, and place similar emphasis on business and nursing majors in relation to importance.

I also think it is important to note that on our visit today we were told that one of the hospitals initiatives was to add to the value of the patient and if the value of their care was not met the hospital would find another way to solve the problem. I found that this same initiative was reflected in the philosophy of the university in that they tried to establish the best and most successful programs for the students, and were focused on expanding the resources and opportunities available to the students. 

The differences and similarities between both universities is influenced by the cultures of each country and also the resources that they have access to. While both universities may offer programs that are similar they are ultimately in some way or another different. Just like if we look at the private versus public hospital systems of Argentina, while they are both hospitals they do not offer all the same technologies and treatments to their patients.