The Ecuadorian Constitution requires that all children attend school until they achieve a "basic level of education", which is estimated at nine school years. In 1996, the net primary enrollment rate was 96.9%, and 71.8% of children stayed in school until the fifth grade. The cost of primary and secondary education is borne by the government, but families often face significant additional expenses such as fees and transportation costs.
Provision of public schools falls far below the levels needed, and class sizes are often very large, and families of limited means often find it necessary to pay for education. In rural areas, only 10% of the children go on to high school. The Ministry of Education states that the mean number of years completed is 6.7.
Ecuador has 61 universities, many of which still confer terminal degrees according to the traditional Spanish education system, honoring a long tradition of having some of the oldest universities in the Americas: University of San Fulgencio founded in 1586 by the Augustines, San Gregorio Magno University founded in 1651 by the Jesuits, and University of Santo Tomas of Aquino, founded in 1681 by the Dominican order.
Among the traditional conferred terminal degrees can be noted the Doctorate for medicine and law schools; Engineer, Physicist, Chemist, or Mathematician for polytechnic or technology institutes. These terminal degrees, as in the case of the PhD in other countries, were the main requirement for an individual to be accepted in academia as a professor or researcher. In the professional realm, a terminal degree granted by an accredited institution provided automatically a professional license to the individual.
However, in 2004 the National Council of Higher Education (CONESUP), started the reorganization of all the degree grating schemes of the accredited universities in order to pair them with foreign counterparts. The new structure of some careers caused the dropping of subjects,
