With a literacy rate of around 96%, Costa Rica boasts one of the best educated workforces in Latin America; the Constitution of Costa Rica requires that the government spend at least 6% of its annual budget on education. As a general rule, public universities tend to outshine private universities, although INCAE, a business school established in association with Harvard University, is one of the top business schools in Latin America.

The four public universities are:

    University of Costa Rica (UCR)
    National University (UNA)
    Technical Institute of Costa Rica (ITCR)
    State University for Distance Learning (UNED)

The largest of these, the University of Costa Rica, has more than 25,000 students. There are about 50 private universities in the country—many of these are quite small. Most private universities charge tuition fees that are substantially higher than tuition fees at public universities. Private universities tend to better cater to the needs of working students who can only attend classes at night or on the weekend. Private universities also generally structure degree programs so that their students can graduate more quickly than students at public universities.

In primary and secondary education, private schools are generally far superior to public schools. Like private schools in North American and Europe, most private schools in Costa Rica offer classes from kindergarten through senior year of high school. Many of the best private schools are international schools. There are two defining features of an international school: i) courses are taught in two languages and ii) curriculum conforms to standards established by international accreditation organizations. The student body at most international schools is a mix of children of foreign parents and children from local, elite families. Costa Rica has a number of international schools in which instruction is in both Spanish and English, but there is also a school that offers Spanish and French, another with Spanish and German, and even a school with Spanish and Japanese. The quality of education at most of these schools is excellent. But regardless of what international school your child attends, you can make a strong argument for the case that any child who graduates from high school with fluency in two languages has received a superior education. 

Most people who are thinking about moving to Costa Rica and who have children usually ask four questions about private education in Costa Rica. First, they want to know whether the schools here will adequately prepare their children for attendance at North American or European universities. The answer is a resounding “yes.” Many of the private schools in Costa Rica offer Advanced Placement courses; and about a half dozen other schools are affiliated with the International Baccalaureate program. Any school that offers such curriculum—and that teaches fluency in two languages—will prepare your child for attendance at the very best universities in the world (and, in fact, will probably give him or her a leg up over students who attend high school in the United States). Second, parents want to know about tuition costs; very generally, the cost per child ranges between $200 and $500 per month, though you can find schools that charge less than that (and substantially more than that—the Country Day School is probably the most expensive in the country, with tuition costs at more than $650 per month). Third, people want to know about the school calendar. Some schools conform to the U.S. school calendar, some are in line with that of the Costa Rican public school system (with “summer” vacation from about mid-December through January), and other schools structure their calendar around European school breaks. Finally, parents want to know where these schools are located. Most are in the Central Valley, which means that if you are planning on living along the coast, you might not always be near a private school. Some parents choose to school their children at home; expatriates in some communities—Nosara and Cahuita, for example—have set up their own private schools. The Country Day School has opened up a satellite school near the beach community of Tamarindo. As more and more expatriates move to beach areas, it’s likely that other private schools in the Central Valley will open up satellite schools in other coastal communities.

Adults who move to Costa Rica often want to start out by learning some Spanish. Not a bad idea. The country abounds in Spanish language schools, of varying quality, prices, and teaching styles. There’s something for everyone—several language schools even combine Spanish courses with surfing classes.