Over the last couple of years, hearing different languages and accents as you walk through the streets of Rosario, has become more and more common. While never before ranking as a tourist destination city, Rosario has now become a sort of Latin American Mecca for people looking to live, work and learn. Clearly a university city for people from surrounding towns and provinces, Rosario has now become a sought after city in the way of education, not only for Argentinians, but also for Brazilian, Colombian, Peruvian, Spanish, French, Haitian, and Northern American university students.
This is largely in part to an internationalization plan being forged by the National University of Rosario. Beginning in 2007 and focusing on the aim of exchanging cultures and enriching local education, we are now seeing the results of this process with a significant increase in foreign enrollment in Master’s and PhD programs in a variety of subjects, with Medicine in the lead.
But it is more than just the drive of the National University; there are many other factors that play into this fairly new phenomenon. Gratuity and academic excellence of the public university, the favorable exchange rates of foreign currency, progressive immigration legislation, and the profile of an attractive and active city crawling with young people, seem to also be instigative factors. And it isn’t only the public education sector that is growing exponentially with foreign students. More and more travelers seem to be choosing Rosario as a city to stay a while, study Spanish, learn the culture, and make life-long friends and memories.