Austral, you’re one beautiful campus. I keep forgetting that the cold breeze is not the winter leaving, but it is the winter coming. Walking around Austral’s campus made me miss the colorful fall semester at Pitt. But, instead of walking all the way to Schenley for a break from the busy and loud roads in Oakland, I really loved being in the big nature right when I stepped outside from lectures.
The higher education system in Argentina is quite interesting. In the United States, a state school like Pitt, students have to pay tuition to attend. However, a state school in Argentina, like the University of Buenos Aires, students attend for free. This made me wonder why a private college, like Austral, would have any attendance if there is a free option to obtain a college degree.
Austral started about 40 years ago to offer high-quality education in a smaller, private setting. Instead of 400,000 students, like the University of Buenos Aires, Austral has about 6,000 students. However, all students do commute. They do not have any on-campus housing. I found this surprising considering the size of the campus and how far it is from the city.
Additionally, Austral is the 2nd qualified school in the nation, but they do depend on tuition and donations to function. The tuition covers all professors’ salaries. There are about 1,000 professors and 25% of them are full-time staff. The donations cover all other costs. Besides this, their fall term is from March to June, spring term is from July to December, and their summer break is from January to February. I felt very off when they smoothly said that their summer is our usual brutal cold winter months. It is so mindblowing that how our “normal” months of seasons are completely opposite of Argentina’s “normal”.
Anyways, Austral is a much smaller and younger school than Pitt, but there are many similarities between the two. It has branch campuses and has a focus on research and innovation, just like Pitt. The main similarity is that Pitt and Austral are focused on healthcare. Even though Pitt is not directly affiliated with UPMC anymore, there are still ways that Pitt students have academic opportunities and experiences at UPMC hospitals nearby or on campus. Similarly, Austral has a hospital built in an academic building, and it is called the Academic Medical Center. However, the problem is that there are more people are affiliated with the hospital/healthcare side than the education side. The first speaker, Dr. Marcelo Villar, described this relationship as “a hospital with a university.” This is the same problem that UPMC and Pitt had. Austral wishes to make the ratio more even and not go the way that UPMC and Pitt did.
After our first two lectures, we had lunch at their cafeteria. Their food had some reminiscence of Market, I would say. After the last lecture, we headed onto a Hop-on-hop-off bus tour of Buenos Aires. I wish we could’ve walked around since the weather was so nice, but it was neat to have an overview of the city in one sitting. I really love how this city (architecture, food, street art, fashion, etc) reminds me of Spain. From the bus, I saw that the city is filled with art and bright colors. I can’t wait to actually walk the city and explore/see the creative and colorful expressions more closely.