摘要：Among the many problems facing higher education today, one in particular concerns the Argentine State and it is the low rates of graduation at public universities. International experience shows that college dropout is a widespread problem that occurs in public and private universities and has social costs that justify public policy actions that tend to their decline. Engineering went from being the most chosen career to reaching the eighth place in the ranking of carrers with greatest number of graduates in 2008. The problem of low graduation rate is closely linked to a phenomenon that mainly occurs in the early stages of the studies at this level, which is dropping out and decreasing of tuition.In this framework, the first decade of the XXI century is the historical context in which tutorial practices were installed in engineering careers in Argentina in order to promote the retention of students in the first years of college education, with the aim to cushion the severe difficulties of articulation between high school and higher education.The study presents an analysis of mentoring as institutional retention strategy, from which we identify the different dimensions that affect the retention of students and a categorization of the factors underlying the permanence of the subjects in the institutional context.
