While it’s no secret to Costa Ricans that the country’s public universities are the top ranked, and offer the widest selection of academic disciples and degree programs, what isn’t talked about so openly is that their students disproportionately hail from the country’s upper echelons.

A recent report indicates that 57.8 percent of students at the country’s state universities come from households in two highest income brackets, according to a study published by the Central American Academy. And a detailed look at the last quarter of 2016 showed that high income bracket students were four times as likely to be enrolled at a public university than the students from the lowest household income levels, showing a dramatic reality of exclusion.

Breaking this down further, nearly a third (30.6 percent) come from the highest income quintile (which includes households with average monthly incomes of ¢2,602,095, or roughly US$4,300).

According to economists Miguel Loría and Josué Martínez, authors of the study, using national household survey data they determined only 7.2 percent of public university students hail from the poorest quintile in the country (those with average incomes of ¢201,563 or US$335). These findings corroborate data in other studies showing similar trends from 2012-2016.

And if the poor can’t access public higher education, private colleges in Costa Rica with virtually non-existent scholarship programs are even further beyond their reach, meaning the country faces a serious problem of equity in access to higher education.

The researchers say this isn’t a problem that rests solely on the shoulders of public universities, but reflects larger problems with the educational system that leave poorer high school students less well-prepared and thus at a disadvantage to compete academically, and may also result from other socio-economic factors that bar their entry into higher education. The causes of the class inequity among the student body was not explored in this study and requires further examination, said the researchers.

Finally, the study showed that although the proportion of students from the country’s second and third economic quintiles attending public universities has increased slightly in recent years, enrollment of students from the poorest quintile is now even slightly lower than it was in 2012.