Milei almost halved education and science spending, reports finds

Investment in education has almost halved since President Javier Milei took office, according to a report by researchers at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA), while spending on science has also suffered deep cuts under the La Libertad Avanza administration.

Funding for education and culture has been reduced more sharply than overall government expenditure, causing both sectors to account for a smaller share of GDP and the national budget, the report found.

A second study by the EPC Group, which monitors public spending on science and technology, said science funding from the national budget has fallen 46.5 percent since Milei took office.

The report, titled “El futuro del financiamiento educativo en debate” (The future of education financing under debate) and produced by researchers at the UBA Economics Interdisciplinary Institute of Political Economy, found that investment in education fell by 47.7 percent in real terms between 2024 and 2025.

In 2024, national funding for education policies contracted sharply. Spending under the Education and Culture budget heading declined by 43.2 percent in real terms compared with the previous year, reducing its share of GDP by around 0.6 percentage points, according to the report.

“Although this occurred within a broader process of reductions in national public spending, the contraction in education was proportionally deeper,” the report states.

As a result, education and culture also accounted for a smaller share of overall federal government expenditure than in previous years.

The researchers said the trend continued in 2025, with real education spending falling a further 7.9 percent compared with 2024.

The latest round of cuts again centred on some of the largest components of national education spending, particularly funding transfers to universities, student support programmes and transfers to provincial governments.

Funding for universities declined 5.4 percent in real terms year-on-year, student grants fell 42.5 percent and spending on a student support programme was reduced by 49.5 percent, after adjusting for inflation.

“The main exception was the National Literacy Plan, which increased its level of execution and became one of the Education Secretariat’s principal policy initiatives,” the report notes.

Overall national education funding continued to decline, although the reductions were not evenly distributed across all programmes.

Science spending

In a second report, the EPC Group argued that the government has accelerated what it described as the dismantling of “Argentina’s national science, technology and innovation system.”

According to the latest EPC Group report, spending under the national budget’s science function fell 2.7 percent in June compared with the same period last year. The group projects that funding will decline by a further 8.8 percent in 2026, bringing the cumulative reduction since Milei took office to 46.5 percent.

Like education, science funding has therefore fallen to roughly half the level allocated in 2023, during former president Alberto Fernández’s government.

In its latest budget analysis, the Centro Iberoamericano de Investigación en Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación(CIICTI) said the cuts had pushed public investment in science to historic lows, equivalent to around 0.151 percent of GDP.

EPC Group director Nicolás Lavagnino argued that the reductions leave the government in breach of existing legislation.

“That figure is well below the 0.298 percent of GDP recorded in 2023 and even further below the target established under the now-suspended ‘Ley de Financiamiento de la Ciencia’ science financing law, which required the government to allocate 0.52 percent of GDP to science this year,” he said.

The government has also continued reducing funding for the CONICET national scientific research institute, cutting its budget by almost a further eight percent.

The institute, which spends 96 percent of its budget on salaries and research scholarships, is projected to lose 34.7 percent of its funding compared with 2023’s data.

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