Universidad de Costa Rica
| Universidad de Costa Rica | |
 |
|
| Motto | Lucem Aspicio (Latin, "In search for the light") |
|---|---|
| Type | Public, undergraduate, graduate. |
| Established | 1940 |
| Rector | Dr. Henning Jensen-Pennington |
| Students | 41.642 (2011) |
| Undergraduates | 37.600 |
| Location | San Pedro Montes de Oca, San José, Costa Rica |
| Campus | Both Urban and Rural |
| Campus size | 77.5 ha, 775.000 m² |
| Website | www.ucr.ac.cr |
The University of Costa Rica (Spanish: Universidad de Costa Rica, abbreviated UCR) is a public university in the Republic of Costa Rica, in Central America. Its main campus, Ciudad Universitaria Rodrigo Facio, is located in San Pedro Montes de Oca, in the province of San José. It is the oldest, largest, and most prestigious institution of higher learning in Costa Rica, originally established as the Universidad de Santo Tomás in 1843. It is also the most important research university in the country, and Central America. Approximately 39,000 students attend UCR throughout the year.
Within the Webometrics ranking, the UCR ranks at #774 worldwide, and at #29 in Latin America.
The first institution dedicated to higher education in Costa Rica was the University of Saint Thomas (Universidad de Santo Tomás), which was established in 1843. That institution maintained close ties with the Roman Catholic Church and was closed in 1888 by the progressive and anti-clerical government of President Bernardo Soto Alfaro as part of a campaign to modernize public education. The schools of law, agronomy, fine arts, and pharmacy continued to operate independently. In 1940, those four schools were re-united to establish the modern UCR, during the reformist administration of President Rafael Ángel Calderón Guardia.
The UCR remained the country's sole university until the Costa Rica Institute of Technology (Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica) and the National University of Costa Rica (Universidad Nacional de Costa Rica) were opened by the government in 1972 and 1973, respectively. Years later, in 1979, another public university opened: the Distance State University (Universidad Estatal a Distancia), modeled after the British Open University. Today, Costa Rica has five public universities (the fifth being the newly created National Technical University), and approximately fifty three small private ones, but the UCR remains the largest and most well funded institution.
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