All around Argentina today, but especially in the capital of Buenos Aires, tens of thousands of professors, students, scientists, trade unionists, and other supporters joined the “Fourth Federal University March” held since Javier Milei took office on Dec. 10, 2023 to demand an end to Milei’s “chainsaw” economics, which reduced the budget of the country’s public universities by 46% between 2023–2026. In October 2025, Congress passed a law guaranteeing federal financing of public universities, which are the backbone of the country’s higher education system, but Milei went to court to claim that the law doesn’t say where the funds are coming from. When lower courts ruled that the law must be upheld, Milei took it to the Supreme Court, which has yet to rule on it.
The failure to provide funding has had devastating consequences, gutting the wages of professors, researchers, and scientists plunging them into poverty, and even indigence, because the purchasing power of their wages has declined by 35% during this timeframe. Many have taken jobs at food delivery companies or restaurants, or as Uber drivers, to compensate for their loss of income. Argentina’s public universities are centers of excellence with highly qualified educators and researchers, including medical doctors who work at university-affiliated hospitals. Ricardo Gelpi, dean of the University of Buenos Aires (UBA), the country’s largest public university, told the daily Infobae that “Argentine universities and science are in a dramatic situation. We can only last a few more months, not years.” He reported that UBA has lost 150 engineering professors. Other universities that carry out crucial scientific work are now on the chopping block.
Although today’s march took place in every major city in the country, the largest contingent was in Buenos Aires, where marchers ended up at the historic Plaza de Mayo in front of the presidential palace, the Casa Rosada. Since many public universities are linked to networks of hospitals that rely on doctors/nurses and other scientific personnel, those hospitals are going to have to close unless funds are forthcoming for doctors’ salaries, etc. There are seven hospitals connected to the UBA, and, according to last week’s press conference by UBA doctors, those hospitals have funds for only 45 days before they will have to close.
