During 2015, a total of 9,300 college students from the United States chose Costa Rica as their learning destination, even over other countries like Australia or Japan.
This number has grown in a 156% since 2001; back then the number of foreign students from the United States was of under 4,000.

The statistics were offered by the Institute of International Education, Open Doors, and the information is used by Costa Rican institutions such as the Foreign Commerce Promotion Agency (Procomer) to follow up with the behavior of what is called “educational services export” in absence of local data.

Costa Rica holds first position in the Latin America and the eight globally as favorite destination of studies by United States students.

The strategies to promote the country as a destination for education is one of the reasons of this increase. Procomer will be participating this year in two international fairs, the China Eduexpo in Shanghái and the Nafsa in the United States; this last one is considered one of the most important fairs internationally.

The positioning of Costa Rica as a touristic destination also contributes to these positive numbers.

Another external factor that play a role in these numbers, is the high costs of private college education in the United States, data by Bloomberg states that studying in some private universities in the United States could mean close to $50,000.00 a year just in enrollment fees.

“Costa Rica has an association (Asucrei) since 2014, to promote our programs internationally. A total of 14 private universities are part of it, and of course it has been beneficial for us”, said Alejandra Barahona, director of the center of international programs at Véritas University.

This University accounts for 800 foreign students a year, the majority from the United States, who stay for short periods of time, and 160 foreigners that are regular students in the institution.

Costa Rica doesn’t have its own statistics in this topic, Procomer and the Tourism Board are trying to get a better idea of the profile of these students in order to come up with better planning on the existing needs the country has to take advantage of this growing sector; one example is the need of a separate policy for student visas.