A subsidized student loan program for lower-income students (the ACCES Program) has been designed in Colombia to achieve greater social equality in access to higher education. This program exemplifies the ‘focalization’ approach in social policy. This program is analyzed in the context of supply and demand of higher education opportunities for these students. Results show that instead of investing in the expansion of quality, public higher education (that is to say, a universalistic social policy approach), this student loan program transfers the financing of higher education, generally at private institutions, to lower-income students themselves through private debt. This leads to a situation of extreme inequity. These lower-income students, who have generally received a low-quality education, cannot compete for the few highly selective spots in public higher education programs, and thus have to take out loans in order to finance their education in private institutions. This analysis clarifies that the function of the ACCES Program is not to promote social equality in education but that it serves as a tool for privatizing educational costs onto the lowest income students themselves. Given the political importance of affirmative action policies in promoting equality of access to higher education, a brief review of these policies in Colombian higher education institutions is presented.