With the cheap ticket it was not noticeable, but the sharp increase in transportation rates highlighted that among university students from state institutions, a group is distinguished from the others by
not having a subsidized ticket
.
They are all the students who reside in the city of Buenos Aires plus those who, from the province of Buenos Aires, travel to the Buenos Aires area to study at UBA or UTN faculties, among others.
Only those who study at the UBA (330,000 people) represent
16% of the total students
of state higher education institutions in the country.
To measure the problem, to that figure we would have to add the students from smaller institutions (the UTN-Buenos Aires, for example, with its 15,000 students) and a second group that no source (neither from the Government nor specialists) could inform, for example. lack of statistics: how many university students from Buenos Aires
travel to study
at public institutions in the Province.
The important thing is that, unlike what happens in half of the country, all of them
pay the full ticket
, at a time when being able to afford the student basket became especially
critical
at the national level.
The former Ministry of Transportation, now a secretariat that depends on the Economy, tracked, at the request of
Clarín
, the provinces in which there is a university student ticket.
The information provided is based on the 19 jurisdictions (one of them is the AMBA) that adhered to the national SUBE system.
The answer is that
12 provinces
give some discount (total or partial) to university students from state institutions in those territories.
In most cases there are
40 or 45 free trips per month
during the school year, as long as the student is regular and has passed a certain number of subjects in the last period, among other requirements that vary from institution to institution.
Let's see what happens only at the UBA, which is one of the busiest institutions in the country, as it represents
13% of the total number of university students
, between public and private entities.
Of the 330,000 students at that university, around 55,000 will begin the Common Basic Cycle (CBC) these days.
They are kids who, for the most part, are around 17 or 18 years old and who - presumably - do not work.
Facing a ticket of more than 300 pesos when several must take more than one transportation to attend, could motivate greater dropouts than usual.
The UBA, "no man's land"
The UBA has countless attributes (educational quality, international recognition...), but it also suffers from the unpleasantness of being a kind of “no man's land.”
It is an autonomous institution and is based in CABA but, like more than 60 other universities, it depends financially on the State, which means that each year Congress must approve its budget.
According to the current government, the above has been more or less problematic.
Either the UBA is considered part of the privileged
Buenos Aires elite
or, from the eyes of the Buenos Aires administrations,
the UBA is national
.
The Faculty of Architecture of the UBA, in Ciudad Universitaria.
Photo: Fernando de la Orden
Some of this tug-of-war also leaves
CABA students enrolled in national universities in the Province
without a place of belonging .
While the majority of university students from Buenos Aires public entities travel free of charge 45 times a month, those who reside in CABA do not have that benefit, since they do not reside
on the side
of General Paz.
UBA's attempts to have a university ticket
The UBA tried
to get a university ticket several times
.
The last one was in 2019. Through an official resolution, the Superior Council ruled "in favor" of implementing a university ticket for UBA students, both from CABA and the Province. The letter urged Congress, the Buenos Aires Legislature and the Chamber of Deputies and Senators of Buenos Aires to advance in the treatment and approval of projects to implement the new ticket.
It did not prosper
.
For the FUBA, an organization that brings together the student centers of the various faculties of the UBA, this is a historic claim that, according to its president, Lucille Levy, they
will resume these days
, with a view to transferring formal requests to the authorities involved.
In the environment of the rector of the UBA, Ricardo Gelpi, they confirmed that the university ticket is a
historic claim in pursuit of equity
, a "fundamental pillar of the UBA and for which the institution has a scholarship system to generate conditions of equality in access to education and
discourage dropouts
due to economic reasons.”
“Out of this and making it clear that we do not abandon the conviction about the need for a tool like the student ticket, today we are in talks with the national government due to the difficulties that the freezing of current expenses at 2023 values represents for the UBA. with an inflation increase of 250%,” they complained.
Now, whose turn would it be to give a ticket like this?
To Nation or to CABA?
To the Transportation portfolio or to the Education portfolio?
University ticket: whose turn is it to give subsidies in CABA
While the national State subsidizes tickets for populations such as disabilities, seniors and domestic workers, among others, students
correspond to the provinces
, they explained in the national Transportation Secretariat.
The Faculty of Engineering of the UBA, near San Telmo.
Photo.
Maxi Failla
But in the Buenos Aires world this gets complicated: the subway depends on the City;
the trains, from the Nation;
and the collectives are a particular astronomical mess.
The rule is that any group that moves in a certain province will depend on the local government.
If it crosses a jurisdictional border, its management will fall (like trains) to the Nation.
But in CABA everything is difficult: there are
103 bus lines
that pass from here to there in General Paz, that is, they are interjurisdictional, and
only 31 lines
depend on the City.
There is more.
Due to a provision of the presidency of Mauricio Macri (which would have actually expired in December 2023, sources in the sector admitted)
the City
only takes charge of
55% of the funds
to maintain those thirty groups, while
the rest (45 %)
is under the responsibility of the
national State
.
Who should then subsidize the university ticket in CABA?
We are back to square one: the UBA is not really Buenos Aires and neither are the buses, in some sense, so the university students who use these services are
quite far from having a solution
to their mobility.
From Transportation of the Nation, the secretariat led by Franco Mogetta, they transmitted that, regarding the university ticket, “no progress has yet been made in an agreement with the three parties” (Nation, Province and CABA) and they outlined a wish that seems distant from the plane of the possible:
“This is an issue that should be addressed in the Metropolitan Transportation Agency, an organization in which the National Government works insistently, since it could functionally work on joint issues between the City, the Province and the Nation in a single tripartite entity.”
That agency was created in 2012. It became official in 2014.
It was never launched
.
UBA students in a public class during a protest.
What CABA says about the university ticket
In the City Ministry of Transportation,
Clarín
was referred to the local Education portfolio, those in charge of the “tickets” issue.
The response was that the City “has its own Student Ticket law” (5656, of 2016), intended for “students who are studying
compulsory education
in City institutions.”
That is, kindergarten, primary and secondary school.
Although they added that, by agreement, in 2017 they included secondary school students dependent on national universities (such as the Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires or the Carlos Pellegrini), they highlighted that this agreement “follows the line” of covering “the students of compulsory education.”
University is not.
Perhaps the most affected students are those who must
pass the General Paz
.
If they go to Buenos Aires, we already said, they do not have a subsidy.
But, what happens to those who come from the Conurbano to study at the UTN or the UBA?
Buenos Aires universities and the university ticket
Unlike the territory governed by Jorge Macri, in Axel Kicillof's territory subsidies are given to university students, but there are unavoidable requirements, they explained in the Buenos Aires Ministry of Transportation: 1) The student must
reside in the Province
;
and 2) he must attend a university
based in that territory
.
Of course, this excludes the headquarters that the UBA itself has in the Conurbano.
In addition, the Province must have established a
specific agreement
with the institution.
There are currently agreements signed with 22 of the 27 public universities in the Province, something that some object to, since it would not strictly be a subsidy to students but rather different agreements with academic institutions, which in some cases would have been delayed.
Transportation of the Province attributes these dissimilar times to
"administrative issues"
(for example, if the municipality does not have the SUBE system), but an important source in the sector who asked to reserve his name spoke of
"discretions"
that led to a greater speed in signing agreements with institutions related to the official political line.
Finally, what other provinces have a university ticket?
According to the Ministry of Transportation, the university ticket is given on the provincial lines of Chaco, which circulate through the city of Corrientes, on some of Entre Ríos (in Concordia, Gualeguaychú and Paraná) and on some of Chubut (in Comodoro Rivadavia, Rawson and Trelew).
Furthermore, in those of the city of Formosa, on the lines of La Pampa (in General Pico and Santa Rosa), in those of Río Negro (General Roca), in the provincial lines of Mendoza, those of Neuquén (in the capital and in San Martín de los Andes), those of Jujuy (in Palpalá and in the capital) and, finally, in those of Santa Fe, both in Rafaela and in Rosario and the provincial capital.
P.S.