Argentina’s President Javier Milei has followed through on his threat to slash university funding, despite an uproar by students and educators.

Millei officially vetoed a law that would guarantee more funding to Argentina’s university system early on Thursday, according to the government gazette.

The law, which had been approved by Congress, would have granted funding increases to public universities to help offset inflation, which is at close to 240 percent year-on-year.

But Milei, a self-proclaimed anarcho-capitalist who has pledged to gut public spending and derided the country’s education system, called the plan “unjustified”.

He said he would strike down any proposal that “threatens the fiscal balance”.

Congress could still push through the university funding law with a two-thirds majority.

‘Plan to destroy public education’

Millei’s veto flew in the face of mass student protests the day before, calling for more investment in the country’s much-lauded public universities, which are free to all.

Many of the demonstrators rallied outside Congress in central Buenos Aires, holding up signs with slogans such as: “How can we have freedom without education?”

Psychology graduate Ana Hoqui said she showed up to the protest to defend the education system that enabled her to pursue a career in medicine.

“I could never have trained without the free, public university system,” Hoqui told the AFP news agency. “That’s why I came to defend it, because I feel it’s in danger.”

Guillermo Duran, dean of sciences at Buenos Aires University, told Al Jazeera that Milei’s cuts “diminish the quality of the education we offer in our public universities, which we’ve always given, which is recognised around the world”.

The mass protest was the second this year in support of public universities, some of which say they cannot pay their electricity bills or pay high enough salaries to keep staff out of poverty.

“The government has a systematic, methodical and gradual plan to destroy public education,” Ricardo Gelpi, head of the University of Buenos Aires, said in a statement.

Milei’s austerity policies have targeted everything from welfare to public works to pensions during his six months in office. And while inflation has dropped, more Argentinians are struggling through economic hardship, with some 53 percent experiencing poverty, according to the government’s National Institute of Statistics and Census.