2. Education offered in our country From 1870, the primary school has been gratuitous and obligatory. This has established the bases for a continuous improvement in the university education and the technical training that in turn it has improved the managerial atmosphere and it has attracted foreign companies so that they settle down in Costa Rica. The Costa Rican labor work force is recognized by its high ones standard educational and its level of excellent productivity.
3. The rate of literacy of Costa Rica is one of the highest in Latin America and the developing countries. In accordance with the Report of Development of Human of the United Nations, the literacy in Costa Rica is of 94.9%. To have enough resources and to finance the national objective so ambitious of guaranteeing an universal access to education of quality, the government for constitution is required to assign 6% of the domestic PIB of his annual budget at least in education programs.
4. At the moment, Costa Rica has fifty nine universities, public four of them and the capital rest and private administration. The Ministry of Education by means of the CONESUP supervises them to all. In the technical education they get ready to the students in areas like: accounting, electro-mechanics, electronic industrial, mechanics of precision, programming of computers and configuration of nets and administration among other things.
5. The Ministry of Education has established programs to guarantee the literacy in sciences of the calculation to standard international and in the English language as a second language.
6. The World Declaration on the Superior Education points out, in its preamble that “if you lacks institutions of superior education and adapted investigation that form a mass it criticizes of qualified and learned people, no country will be able to guarantee an authentic and sustainable development.”
7. A direct relationship exists among the expense level in education and the growth of the PIB. A country with high education indexes exhibits better indicators of competitiveness; A highly educated country is more attractive for the direct foreign-owned investment; In the medium term, increments in the education expense generate increments in the productivity; At more level of grade academic bigger entrance levels; The education is par excellence the mechanism that it allows social mobility.
8. What do we need to improve to cope with the demands of a globalized world? The new economy and the revolution of the information that it has been carried out in the last years have challenged the traditional concepts of education. The change and the adjustment to the change have become the dominant challenges to overcome for an educational system that wants to be successful.
9. In spite of the good investment level in education of Costa Rica, if comparative with other countries of Latin America, our country has not been able to advance to the same rhythm in what is productivity. Of a comparative analysis it stands out, without a doubt some, the delay of Costa Rica, with regard to developed countries (as the United States, Finland or Ireland) or of newly industrialization (as Singapore or Korea of the South), in key areas as the quality of the public schools, the quality of the education in mathematics and sciences, the access to Internet in the schools, the registration in superior education.
10. Challenges and necessities in theeducation Costa Rican MEP: To guarantee the execution of the constitutional provision from the right to the education of all the inhabitants of the Republic, offering an education of total covering and of excellent quality that facilitates the person's integral development.
11. Justness A narrow relationship exists between the quality of the education and the justness. The tendency to the deterioration in the quality of the public education contributes to the expansion of the social inequalities, as long as the groups with higher socioeconomic conditions have the opportunity to consent to an education of more quality.
12. Quality A topic that has acquired bigger relevance it is that of the evaluation and the invigoration from the oriented initiatives to the insurance of the quality in the institutions, the careers and the programs in the superior education. The quality of the superior education is a multidimensional concept that should understand all its functions and activities: teaching and academic, educational programs, infrastructure and academic environment (non violence).
13. Offer > Demands = Unemployment Very important it is the comparison between the labor offer of the universities and the demand of professionals. With a lot of evidence, according to data of La Nación and of CONARE, they are the engineerings the careers that present the smallest breach among demand and it offers. The education and the social sciences, on the contrary, they are those that show the biggest difference among demand and it offers.
14. Linking and employment It is important to promote a more narrow relationship and of mutual benefit between the university sectors and the productive sectors. The institutions of superior education should have very in bill the changing nature of the world of the work and to prepare in such capacities as “soft skills" (dexterities and abilities), opportunity sense, leadership, team work analytic capacity and of synthesis, emotional intelligence.
15. Investigation = Innovation The public universities of Costa Rica are those that carry out most of the scientific investigation that is carried out in the country. The research and development stocks that carry out the universities, should be focused to solve real problems of the productive sector. The universities should stimulate in the student population the development of a “culture of the innovation and the investigation”, by means of an outline of managerial formation and of development to the creativity and the innovation that allow those and the new professionals to respond to personnel's requirements that has the domestic productive sector and of the region.
17. English Among the most important challenges for the Costa Rican superior education and for the domestic development it is without a doubt some the teaching of the English language. That implies an important investment starting from the primary school.
18. Budgetary and fiscal problem Mrs. Silvia Castro Montero affirms that: " The public institutions register 31.11% of the university population's total, but they receive 100% of the available public funds for superior education. These funds subsidize the education of each one of the students that enroll in the public institutions by means of the collection of drops grant rates, equivalent to 8% of the real cost of their education. However, 51.44% of these students had enough resources to be able to pay the grant of private schools.
