A Global Perspective on the Big Fix

In response to Carol's recent post on NYT Magazine's The Big Fix CEOs for Cities partner Diego Kolsky gives us a global perspective on universal access to higher education:

"As you know I come from Argentina. To this day the university is free to citizens and residents. When my parents attended college (60's) the quality of the university matched those in Europe (Argentina modeled much of its government and culture on the French and British.) When I attended, the quality of the education had deteriorated much (due to a decade of dictatorship, censorship and intellectual persecution), although my free undergraduate design school matched and even surpassed my graduate school here in the US.

Sadly, free education by itself didn't amount to equality, although I would argue a host of other factors intervened (degradation of public institutions and government as a whole, on a level we can't compare, even after the last administration!) In the case of Argentina, access to public university is prevented today from social inequality (affording the time and resources to study) something that is also a lesson: i.e. no time to waste.

I think the comparison also highlights one quality that is good when coupled with access to a superior education: American entrepreneurship and can-do attitude. Without these, in a contracted or flat job market (e.g. not just Argentina but Europe too) there would be little incentive for people to attend college and post-graduate programs."

  

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