Students stand up for public universities

Tens of thousands of students, teachers, education workers and supporters marched through the streets of downtown Buenos Aires city on 12 May to support the country’s public education system, venting their anger at President Mauricio Macri and his administration in the wake of what education unions are calling a full-scale funding crisis, writes Orlando Jenkinson for Buenos Aires Herald.

The march represented the climax of an ongoing six-day strike by teachers and education workers at the University of Buenos Aires, who slammed the government’s announcement of a ARS500 million (US$35 million) investment as severely insufficient, and their frustration from the Macri administration’s failure to respond accordingly was palpable on the Córdoba and Callao avenues.

Professors and teachers stood and marched shoulder to shoulder with multitudes of students of all ages and a spectrum of political parties and movements demanding greater state investment in public education and improvements to school and university infrastructure that teaching unions say is, in many cases, on its knees.
Full report on the Buenos Aires Herald.com site