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On the first day of the PSU exam, authorities from the Council of Rectors, Mineduc and the University of Chile visited the Eliodoro García Zegers Industrial High School in the Santiago commune.
Early this morning, students began arriving at the Eliodoro García Zegers Industrial High School in the Santiago district for the first day of the University Selection Tests (PSU). Among those present at the school were the Executive Vice President of the Council of Rectors and Rector of the University of Valparaíso, Aldo Valle; the Acting Minister of Education, Valentina Quiroga; the Rector of the University of Chile, Ennio Vivaldi; the Vice-Rector of Academic Affairs at the University of Chile, Rosa Devés; and the Director of the Department of Educational Evaluation, Measurement, and Registration (DEMRE) at the University of Chile, Leonor Varas.
For Rector Valle, the 289,444 people registered to take the PSU in this process reflect the reliability of the Unified Admission System of the Council of Rectors. In this regard, he emphasized that “this is a reliable, transparent, and public admission system, in which we are making a national effort, because we want merit, effort, and talent to be the only things that enter each room where this test will be administered, and for each student equally; there is perhaps no other public event that brings together Chilean youth in this way.” Currently, 33 universities participate in the Unified Admission System of the Council of Rectors (25 universities from the CRUCH and 8 private universities affiliated since 2011).
On the other hand, Aldo Valle highlighted the work of the DEMRE at the University of Chile, the body that, by mandate of the Council of Rectors, administers the admissions process. “This is a professionally developed process with an admirable approach on the part of the DEMRE,” he stated.
For her part, Acting Minister of Education Valentina Quiroga stated, “We are here as the Ministry, along with the rectors of the Council of Rectors of Chilean Universities (CRUCH), monitoring the smooth running of this process, which is taking place nationwide.” She also noted that this process is constantly being improved “to make it increasingly equitable and fair for certain curricular areas, such as technical and vocational education.” Therefore, she maintained, it is necessary “to complement this assessment tool, the University Selection Test (PSU), with other instruments that are also very important and gaining traction, such as the grade ranking system.”.
PACE program
Regarding the existence of other systems for accessing higher education, Rector Aldo Valle highlighted that this year the Program for Accompaniment and Effective Access to Higher Education (PACE) begins in five universities belonging to the Council of Rectors (University of Santiago, Federico Santa María Technical University, University of Antofagasta, Catholic University of Temuco, and Catholic University of the North). “There are new developments in this process, all of them constructive, since they seek to expand opportunities for our young people to access higher education. Therefore, we want Chilean society to commit itself and help us so that young people can make the best decisions,” Rector Valle stated.
The PACE program was created by the current government to advance towards a more inclusive higher education system where students have equal opportunities to access higher education. Its pilot phase began in 2014 in five regions, 34 municipalities, and a group of 7,614 third-year high school students from 67 schools, 901 of which are public.
Therefore, in this 2016 Admission Process, the first generation of the PACE Program will enter Higher Education (More information: http://www.pace.mineduc.cl/).
Photo: Ministry of Education.
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