UBA or USA: Coming to terms with the competition

I have a confession to make: We have not put money away for college savings for our kids. We have squandered it on international travel. When we should have been staying home and saving thousands to finance two university educations, we spent it instead on plane tickets to London, Lima and Rio. Now that high school graduation is nearly upon us, how do I feel about this? Pretty fine, really. Like they’ve gotten the most for the money. Like we have not allowed their childhoods and our family life to be shaped by the insane cost of college in the US.

How do I feel about them not even applying to US schools? That’s a different matter. Confession No. 2: I am envious of all my friends’ kids after the barrage of acceptance announcements I’ve received in the last few months. Georgetown, Barnard, UVA… All these kids I’ve known for the past 18 years have made the grades, high test scores, done their volunteer work, been awarded scholarships to top institutions of higher learning and will soon be leaving home for their respective dorms. Their parents glow with pride. I can’t help it, there’s nothing to be done about my competitive streak. I feel cheated. I have no announcement to make. L&F took the SAT, they got high scores. But in the end, the decision to apply for scholarships to US schools has been tabled. They will be starting at the University of Buenos Aires next year; they didn’t have to ‘get in’, take entrance exams, apply for scholarships or write fantastic essays, nor did we have to save money. It’s a free system, open to all. And they’ll be living at home.

I am a rubber-band ball of contradictions, I admit, but bear with me while I work this out. One wonders, if I really wanted them to follow the standard path of US college applications, why did we not prioritize the money for starters, knowing that it would be essential? I could play the Argentine husband card here, but in all honesty, I personally have an issue with the cost/quality equation when it comes to US higher education, so being married to someone who grew up in a country where it’s free and who, by all counts is a perfectly well-educated and successful adult—well, that just adds to my conviction. So this pretty much leaves me with my own competitive tendency, which, as I’ve mentioned in previous posts, is at least partly a product of my own glory years of imbibing US education culture. Despite my keen awareness of this, it has nevertheless reared its head and roared in the present circumstances and left me feeling cowed and small. Therefore, in an effort to put things right and relative, I submit the following questions to myself and anyone else in a position to choose:

1. Do you believe a US undergraduate education to be the best in the world? In general, no. Most of the people I admire and respect were educated elsewhere in the world. Many have US graduate degrees, though.
2. Do you think paid education is inherently superior to free, public education? No, I have seen the output of both, and know just as many successful people who attended free universities.
3. Do you think leaving home to go to university is essential to one’s independence? No, not right away. I think 17/18-year-olds are often still in need of some guidance and may well achieve adult-like independence more organically with a couple more years at home.
4. Do you think the social aspect of university life is as important as the academic, or should school only be about an academic education? I agree that the social aspect of university is an essential part of a broader education, however I don’t think the all-inclusive ‘campus’ is the only way to get that. School can easily be just about academics, especially in an urban setting, making the fees people often pay for the campus experience a bit crazy.
5. Do you think not attending a US university is in any way an obstacle to getting a job in that country later in life if one has comparable qualifications from elsewhere? The statistics say not at all.

So this is where I’m supposed to finally embrace UBA, break out my swagger and tell you how it’s one of the top universities in Latin America, that students from other countries in the region flock here, and that it’s free, free, free. And that we happen to live in the city that is the destination of loads of US students, who come to do their studies abroad here. But it’s not gonna come to that, because I just don’t feel it. And the reason I don’t feel it is the same reason L&F don’t feel the urge to compete to get into US schools. Because it’s just not in the atmosphere around us. Transitioning from high school to public university in Argentina is really just a matter of registration, so there’s no hype attached to it, no bragging rights. It is much the same with the kids I know in different countries in Europe. The world is wide and there is never just one way. I am happy about all the amazing teenagers I know in the US who are going to off to fine universities, and I share their parents’ pride. But I am also finally coming around to the fact that the choice we have here feels like the right choice for us, at least for starters, and an equally enviable one at that.