The university system here is COMPLETELY different from the United States. This is making it extremely difficult for me to put any value of my $45,000/year of my long, difficult, and stressful 4 years.
In the US, you can study any major. Most of the time, what you study in school is the career path you end up choosing. However, you can double-major in French Language and English Literature and work in the health-care field at a powerful consulting firm in DC. You can major in Psychology with a Pre-med concentration and an almost minor in Political Science and have no idea what to do with your life. In the US, it is very free and open to what you choose to study.
In Argentina, you study at a university for a specific career or a set of professions you are allotted based on your university studies. For example, if you go into the public university here to study agricultural engineering, you will be an agricultural engineer. If you go into an university here to study psychology, you will be a therapist or be some sort of counselor. You cannot pursue careers in other areas of expertise because they will not accept you. What you study is what you will do for the rest of your life...if you so choose.
The advantage of the Argentinian system is that it is very structured and organized. Everyone is on the same level of understanding. At the same time, this can be a disadvantage because nothing new is learned. Different methods of thinking and analyzing are not studied and therefore, almost never used. There are no liberal arts programs here. So, my 2 semesters studying film and theater do nothing for me here other than that I can watch "Blue Velvet" and explain how it is all a dream.
The advantage of the decentralized system of the US system is that you learn to consider, analyze, and deliberate in many different ways, which allow you to have the opportunity to set multiple career paths for yourself. However, at the same time, there is no standard to getting a specific job in the US sometimes. A person can be overly qualified in their studies to do a job, but because another person has more experience in the area, that other person will get the job.
So, because the systems are completely different, they are making it almost impossible for me to take off a couple of years (just 2! That's all I am asking for out of my 4 years!) of university studies here so I can pursue a better job in the future. Great.
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