Eight out of ten first-time students at the University of Costa Rica (UCR) They do not have the reading skills that would be expected at that level. This means that Only two out of ten students have the ability to understand the texts assigned to them in higher education.
This is revealed by the results of an investigation carried out in all the headquarters and campuses of that house of higher education with 2,000 people who entered in 2025.
The study, prepared by the Institute for Research in Education (INIE) of the UCR, consisted of the application of the adaptive test DIALECT to the students. This exam It allows determining the strengths and weaknesses in reading subprocesses.
“The results confirm what we already know and the State of Education has been saying: the reading comprehension process is very bad in the students“, commented Eiliana Montero, member of the research group.
In its tenth report, the State of Education revealed that in Costa Rica there are students in ninth year who read like they were in third gradea lag that is also evident in university classrooms.
In July 2025, the report Reading Comprehension Skills of First-Entry Students of the National University (UNA) brought to light that only 14% of General Studies studentslocated at the headquarters in 2024, entered with a satisfactory level.
Now, the results at the UCR show a similar reality.
The test applied was scored by lexilesa metric that allows us to estimate both people’s comprehension ability and the level of difficulty of a text. From these results, the reading ability of the students could be determined according to their location and campus.
The information showed that only in two UCR headquarters, more than 20% of the students had satisfactory reading comprehension. These are the Grecia campus, with 22.9%, and the Central headquarters, Rodrigo Facio, with 20.9%.
The most dramatic cases are the Del Sur headquarters, in Golfito, and Santa Cruz, Guanacaste, where the 0% of the test participants reached the satisfactory level.
Regarding the result by lexiles, the three precincts with the best reading performance were Alajuela (with 1,106 lexiles), Grecia (with 1,104 lexiles) and Central (with 1,103 lexiles). These data correspond to an average, so students can be above or below the figure.
In the last positions and below 1,000 lexiles are Santa Cruz (with 980) and Del Sur (944).
The lexiles allow a comparison to be made between Costa Rican students and students from industrialized countries.
Eiliana Montero explained that the students who showed the best performance are comparable to tenth grade students from other nations. Meanwhile, as indicated, university students from campuses such as Del Sur and Santa Cruz They have a reading comprehension like that of seventh-grade students from industrialized countries.
“In neither of these two locations were there students with a satisfactory level to be able to deal with university texts.
“On a general level we can say that really in all the headquarters “It is a minority of students who, according to this measurement, are at the appropriate level of reading competence required to understand university texts”said the researcher.
Jáirol Núñez Moya, vice-rector of teaching at the UCR, commented that the research presents data that shows that student backwardness It is not a perception of university teachers.
“If we want a change in the country, we have to bet on structural projects and a general vision of the educational system and not blame universities for situations in which we can contribute and in which we are concerned about contributing. But We require that adjustments also be made at other educational levels”said Núñez.
What can students do and what can’t they do?
A text like Historicity of the Spanish School and Narration in The Language of Butterflies What students at the UCR Headquarters must read has a range of 1,010 to 1,200 lexiles.
This writing can be read appropriately by students who are close to that lexical average. But those who are below that level They could not understand, on their own, this reading without pedagogical support.
“Now let’s look at the most difficult text, The glass frontier by Carlos Fuentes, which has a range of 1,410 to 1,600 lexiles (…). The vast majority of students, without adequate pedagogical scaffolding, without specific support, would not be able to understand that text on their own,” Montero explained.
The research carried out at the UCR included the participation of María de los Ángeles Carpio, as coordinator; as well as Catalina Ramírez Molina, Diego Alexánder Ugalde Fajardo and Grettel María Mora Coto. The report presented a description of student performance levels that are between 985 and 1,087 lexiles.
These students are capable of understanding general and academic vocabulary of medium frequency, although they have difficulty with specialized terms. Usually, they require glossaries to consolidate meanings of key concepts.
Regarding grammar, students in this range of lexiles manage to adequately handle simple and compound sentences, but when it comes to very complex syntax, this can cause confusion.
Regarding reasoning, these students are able to identify main ideas and some relationships between them, but they are still strengthening their ability to make complex inferences.
What’s coming
The research project consists of three parts. The first was, precisely, to make the diagnosis that evidenced the state of reading comprehension with which the students are arriving at the UCR.
The second step will be to design this year a pedagogical proposal to improve reading comprehension. And the third stage will be to implement this proposal in 2027 in different groups.
For Catalina Ramírez, who works in secondary school teacher training at the UCR Faculty of Education, the research reveals that it is necessary to make adjustments in schools and not only in terms of evaluating reading comprehension, but also teaching it.
“If we review the (school) Spanish study program, we realize that there are no orderly, sequenced or didactic processes on how to make texts understood, on how to teach texts to be understood,” said the researcher.
