Costa Rica has built on its legacy of supporting an educated population by continuing to build the educational system and emphasize the presence of IT in the curriculum. A tremendous effort has gone into ensuring that education facilities produce appropriately skilled knowledge workers and professionals to contribute to the development of Costa Rica.

As early as 1974, the Costa Rican government used Inter-American Development Bank financing to expand the Costa Rican Technological Institute (ITCR) into what has become one of Latin America's most advanced computer science and software engineering schools. The government's dedication to an educated population is also exemplified in the redistribution of expenditures from defense funding to education funding. The results of this effort are easily discernible.

In 1999, the illiteracy rate was below 3.5 percent and 18.5 percent of the active population had completed university, technical and advanced university studies.