About USFQ    All Academic Programs / Todos Programas Academicos Photos of USFQ Statistics from the Office of International Programs

International Programs

USFQ Home

 

 

Universidad San Francisco de Quito (USFQ) is a private university founded in 1987 and legally exists beneath the umbrella organization "Corporación de Promoción Universitario" (CPU), a non-profit foundation. USFQ is located in Cumbayá, a valley adjacent to Quito, Ecuador. The CPU is dedicated to improving education in Ecuador through the principles of liberal arts education. USFQ which first opened its doors in 1987, and its programs have been officially recognized by the Ecuadorian Ministry of Education and Culture since 1995.

 

USFQ, like Ecuador, is a unique and quite amazing place.  Its founders revolutionized education in 1988 when they established the first private university in Ecuador.  To this day USFQ is seen as the standard of excellence in Ecuadorian higher education. 

Taking advantage of the richness that Ecuador has to offer, USFQ has four campuses:

• USFQ/Cumbayá Campus - Just outside Quito, this is USFQ's primary campus.  This campus is home to 13 colleges and is the main administrative headquarters.

• The Galapagos Academic Institute for the Arts and Sciences (GAIAS) -USFQ has the only campus offering higher education in the archipelago. Its programs emphasize ecology, marine biology, and conservation. It also offers classes to the local population.

• The Tiputini Biodiversity Station (TBS) - Deep in the Amazon Basin, TBS is run in conjunction with Boston University.  A National Geographic journalist called it "the most remarkable place" on earth.  TBS is the most diverse place for amphibians on the planet, with 121 species. In the February 1999 issue of National Geographic, journalist Virginia Morell called it "the most remarkable place" after visiting several sites around the world in order to write a series of articles on biodiversity.

• Instituto Santiago de Quito -Three hours south of Quito in the culturally rich colonial town of Riobamba, this new campus offers Andean highland cultural and outdoor  adventures, gender studies, volcanology, culinary programs, and intensive Spanish. It also functions as a feeder campus for the main campus and offers dozens of classes in diverse areas.   (Photos of ISQ)
   

USFQ also regularly hosts world summits and conferences on cutting edge themes such as the brain, evolution, physics, architecture and medicine.  They are attended by world-renown scientists and Nobel Prize winners. 

 

MISCELLANEOUS FACTS

• USFQ's student body numbers approximately 5,000.  3,300 are 4-year undergraduates, 800 are "tecnología" (community college) students, 900 are in a program for police cadets, 700 are international students, 200 are graduate students, 120 are in the CISCO Systems Academy, 70 are students on our Galapagos campus, and 50 study in the Women's College.

• USFQ offers approximately 1500 different courses every semester.

• All USFQ students participate in a mandatory community service program (placements can be arranged for international students, too).

• USFQ is a completely tuition-driven, non-profit foundation that receives no government funding.

• The University has dental and medical clinics that serve the local community.

• USFQ's library has the only open-stack facility, and the largest collection (80,000 volumes), in the country.  It also offers complete on-line and audiovisual library services.

• USFQ has 195 full-time faculty and 465 part-time (an extraordinarily high number of full-time faculty for a Latin American university).

• USFQ employs about 100 terminal degree full time faculty, 70 of which hold a doctoral degree -- 70% of those are Ecuadorian nationals.

• USFQ employs over half of the Ph.D.s in Ecuador.

• USFQ has the largest single-institution Office of International Programs in South America -- having exchange agreements with 96 universities and receiving close to 1,000 foreign students on its campuses each year (see details).

 

USFQ MISSION STATEMENT

            Universidad San Francisco de Quito (USFQ) is a private liberal arts institution that promotes the quest for knowledge, individual liberties, and the entrepreneurial spirit as a means for the development of Ecuadorian society through excellence in teaching, supported by qualified and committed faculty, comprehensive and rigorous curricula, and adequate resources.

             Goodness, beauty, and truth are the guiding principles under which the university was created. USFQ students shall have instilled in them a passion for learning, love for justice, and the need for freedom in order to be citizens of the world objectively celebrating differences and strongly promoting free enterprise as a means for a better future.

 

ACCREDITATION

USFQ is accredited by "CONESUP" (Consejo Nacional de Educacion Superior) in Ecuador. We have around 88 international exchange agreements and all of those universities accept our credits.

We are SEEKING candidacy with a North American accrediting agency which, in real terms, means nothing. However, it has put our university through a grueling process of guaranteeing academic excellence that sets us apart from other universities in Ecuador.