Education & Universities in Guatemala

Education in Guatemala: What You Need to Know

Guatemala’s education landscape spans from the free public university (USAC, founded in 1676) to elite private institutions and world-class international schools. Whether you are a local family choosing a school, a diaspora parent considering sending children to study here, or a foreigner exploring options, this page has the data you need.

Key Facts

• 15 universities – 1 public (USAC) and 14 private
• University fees: USAC lists a Q91 annual matricula for Guatemalan students and a Q1,800-Q24,000 first-year fee for foreign students; UVG publishes Q6,442.80 a month for most degrees (5 payments a semester, first-semester 2026 table); most other private universities, UFM included, publish no annual tuition. Full walk-through for foreign students: universities for foreign students

Correction (23 September 2026): earlier versions of this page gave university tuition as running from essentially free (USAC) to $10,400 a year (UFM), with Mariano Gálvez at $1,300, said foreign students still pay very little at USAC, and put the USAC admission process at 3-6 months. None of those figures traces to a source: UFM publishes no colegiatura, USAC charges foreign students Q1,800 to Q24,000 in the first year, and USAC publishes no processing time. See our corrections policy.

• International school tuition is mostly unpublished. The two schools that publish: CAG at Q103,110-Q111,050/year (2026-2027) and Colegio Maya at US$12,101-US$19,037/year
• School year runs January to October/November (public/private) or August to June (international)
• Many diaspora families wire tuition money from the US — compare transfer rates to keep more quetzales for school fees

Why Study in Guatemala?

For Guatemalan families in the US, sending children to study at a Guatemalan university can save $100,000+ over a four-year degree compared to US tuition. Top private universities like URL, UVG, and UFM have strong international reputations, and USAC degrees in medicine, law, and engineering are respected throughout Central America.

For expat families, the international schools fall into a few groups: US-accredited schools such as the American School (CAG), Colegio Maya and Colegio Interamericano; six IB World Schools, none of which is CAG or Colegio Maya; and European national schools such as the German and French schools. Only five schools in our dataset publish a tuition figure. The directory below shows, school by school, what each one publishes.

Correction (2 October 2026): this paragraph used to say that Guatemala City’s international schools offer American and IB curricula and that CAG and Colegio Maya are comparable to top US prep schools, and the key facts said Guatemala’s education costs 70-99% less than the United States. Neither CAG nor Colegio Maya is an IB school, and we have no source for the comparison or the percentage, so they are gone.

For more on daily life costs beyond education, see our cost of living guide. If you are also learning Spanish, check our Spanish schools guide or, if you are basing yourself in Antigua, the Antigua Spanish schools price comparison. For families relocating, our how to move to Guatemala guide covers visas, housing, and logistics.

School directory: what each school publishes

Built from our school-by-school dataset — the school’s own site, the accrediting body’s register and MINEDUC’s registry, each row with the date we read it. Schools with their own page on this site are linked: the six IB World Schools are El Roble, Campoalegre, Entrevalles, Solalto, Colegio Internacional SEK Guatemala and Antigua Montessori School.

For the Guatemala City schools in depth see international schools in Guatemala City; for Antigua, bilingual schools near Antigua; for school-year dates, the MINEDUC school calendar.

Data Sources

University and school data is compiled from official university websites, the US State Department school fact sheets, MINEDUC (Ministry of Education) publications, UniPage, uniRank, and local research. University fee figures were read from USAC’s and UVG’s own fee pages on 23 September 2026 and are subject to change. Exchange rate used: Q7.66 per USD.