These days, the national discussion about the Program for Accompaniment and Access to Higher Education (PACE) focuses on budgetary aspects and the results of evaluations associated with the latest experimental design evaluated. However, behind the numbers there is a reality that deserves to be observed carefully: the concrete experience of educational and university communities that, year after year, make this policy possible.
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The 29 universities that implement this affirmative action state policy throughout the national territory know this reality firsthand. An example of this is the Metropolitan University of Education Sciences (UMCE), where PACE goes beyond what an indicator matrix measures, building an accompaniment strategy that seeks to expand opportunities, strengthen educational trajectories, and contribute to young people from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds being able to access, remain, and project themselves in higher education.
The UMCE experience reflects an important process of territorial consolidation. Since its implementation, the program has expanded its presence from 9 partner schools in 2015 to 24 high schools currently. Along this path, the team of professionals has directly accompanied more than 43,000 high school students and has contributed to enabling 3,248 young people to apply to higher education.
However, the greatest challenge begins once the students cross the university threshold. It is there that it becomes especially important to ensure that access transforms into retention and a trajectory that allows progress toward graduation.
Historical data from PACE-UMCE show that retention in the early years of implementation was marked by significant gaps. The first cohort admitted via PACE in 2017 recorded a first-year retention of just 65.0% compared to the institutional average of 83.2%.
However, tracking this pioneering cohort allows us to observe significant evolution. According to the Trajectory Report (2022), their academic performance experienced sustained improvement from the fourth semester, until it matched the averages of their peers admitted through regular admission by the sixth semester, corresponding to the third year of the degree. Likewise, during 2019 and 2020, no PACE student from this cohort recorded annual averages below grade 5.0.
Results from recent years show this evolution. The 2023 cohort reached a first-year retention of 89.2% and 81.1% in the second year. Meanwhile, the 2024 cohort records 81.2% retention in its second year. Beyond the numbers, these results show that accompaniment policies require continuity, specialization, and institutional capacity to learn from experience.
Retention difficulties and non-retention rates among socially disadvantaged university students are complex and multifactorial phenomena, not due to a lack of intellectual capacity or effort, but to the intersection of economic and material factors, academic gaps from being first-generation, and psychosocial and adaptation factors. Addressing them requires active institutional support capable of strengthening the sense of belonging, resilience, and tools to face the difficulties inherent in university life.
The accumulated experience of UMCE shows that evaluating PACE requires looking beyond the moment of entry. When accompaniment is sustained and specialized, initial gaps can be reduced and trajectories can be transformed because we have learned that it is necessary to observe what happens afterward: who remains, how their trajectories evolve, what support they require, and how many ultimately graduate.
On this path, UMCE already has 46 graduates in Education degrees, out of a historical total of 64 graduates and 12 soon-to-be graduates also about to complete their graduation processes. In 2026, moreover, 58 people with a pedagogical vocation enrolled at UMCE, out of a total of 74 thanks to the program. Supporting the training of future teachers from socially disadvantaged backgrounds has a dimension that transcends their own trajectories: it also means contributing to strengthening the future educational communities of the country.
Therefore, talking about PACE should not only mean discussing indicators, budgets, or methodological designs. It also implies recognizing what happens in classrooms, in tutoring, in professional teams, and in the capacity of institutions to learn and adjust their strategies by valuing intellectual capacities with equity. Maintaining and strengthening PACE therefore means sustaining a public policy that has expanded educational opportunities for thousands of young people and that, in the case of UMCE, also contributes to training the teachers who will be in the country’s classrooms tomorrow.
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