This manuscript discloses the results of an investigation involving university students of Social Sciences and Education from Universidad Católica Silva Henríquez and Academia de Humanismo Cristiano, focusing on the gratuity policy in Chilean higher education and its effectiveness in guaranteeing the right to education of vulnerable young people. The analysis is set in the context of the profound changes experienced by higher education since the privatization and massification of the system during the military dictatorship and the growing demands of the student movement to transition to a universalist model based on rights. The research set out to deepen the interaction between the vulnerability conditions of students and the implementation of this public policy, tensing their transit through the university. The conclusions are disquieting as they reflect delicate inadequacies and omissions in the partial results achieved by the gratuity policy in education