History
The first institution dedicated to higher education in Costa Rica was the University of St. 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 University of Costa Rica (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. Five 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 private ones, but the UCR remains the largest and most well funded institution.
Read more about this topic: University Of Costa Rica
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“In the history of the human mind, these glowing and ruddy fables precede the noonday thoughts of men, as Aurora the sun’s rays. The matutine intellect of the poet, keeping in advance of the glare of philosophy, always dwells in this auroral atmosphere.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“One classic American landscape haunts all of American literature. It is a picture of Eden, perceived at the instant of history when corruption has just begun to set in. The serpent has shown his scaly head in the undergrowth. The apple gleams on the tree. The old drama of the Fall is ready to start all over again.”
—Jonathan Raban (b. 1942)
“History is more or less bunk. It’s tradition. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker’s damn is the history we make today.”
—Henry Ford (1863–1947)