A leading, pioneering university

The UOC was founded in 1995 as the world's first online university, with the aim of using technology to make high-quality university education accessible to all.

More than 90,000 people from more than 130 countries study at the UOC, with a wide range of ages and professional and personal circumstances. Most of them need to combine their studies with family commitments and their career, which is why they value the flexible timetable the UOC offers them and the opportunity to manage their time.

For this reason, the UOC's education programmes are regularly updated to reflect new personal and professional circumstances and to meet the changing requirements of the job market. We focus on the competencies that will be necessary for the professions of today and, even more so, for those of tomorrow.

To this end, we have a wide range of programmes and courses designed to meet current challenges. Our official university programmes (bachelor's degrees, university master's degrees and doctoral studies) are accredited by quality agencies and conform to the standards of the European university system. Besides university degrees, year upon year we expand our continuing education options, designed to support your lifelong learning and offer personalized solutions at all times. A good example of this is the new microcredentials, digital certificates that can be obtained with short, specialized training courses for personal and professional development.

Over the years, more than 133,000 people from more than 150 countries have graduated from the UOC, and they maintain their ties with the university through the UOC Alumni network.

A non-profit university with a public mandate

The UOC was founded on the initiative of the Government of Catalonia with the aim of creating a public, non-profit institution with the organizational flexibility of a private entity, managed through a foundation.

We have a Board of Trustees and are supervised by the Government of Catalonia and the Parliament of Catalonia. Part of our budget is covered by a public subsidy that is subject to the fulfilment of certain objectives set out in an agreement. The rest of our income comes from enrolments, fundraising for research projects and UOC Corporate, which designs and runs transformative learning solutions for companies and organizations.
Each academic year, the Government of Catalonia issues a decree regulating the price of credits for official degrees at public universities in Catalonia, including those of the UOC.

With regard to how the institution is run, the UOC's Organizational and Operational Regulations stipulate that the university has single-person and collegiate governing bodies, and that the combined representation of teaching and administrative staff on its coordinating and representative bodies ensures the optimal implementation of the educational model. In addition, students also participate in the improvement of the institution through student representative bodies. Find out more about how we are organized.

A university open to all

Our learning model is unique. It is radically student-centred, and has evolved over 30 years to respond to emerging needs and adapt to new social and technological contexts.

The purpose of our model is to provide a memorable learning experience.

It enables and enhances continuing education, meeting the needs of people and organizations and fully tapping the potential of the internet to learn in a flexible, asynchronous environment.

The UOC's methodology combines learning activities and projects, customized teaching support and teamwork.

Quality is part of our DNA and that is why we have obtained institutional accreditation as a centre from the Government of Spain's Universities Council, making us the first Catalan university to have all its official university bachelor's degrees and master's degrees accredited.

The UOC's commitment to the 2030 Agenda

The UN's 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is at the heart of the UOC's efforts to become a global university, and we are facing the great global challenges by developing knowledge to achieve social progress.

One of our goals is to promote quality higher education for all and, thanks to our online learning model, higher education can be made available all over the world, leaving no one behind. To this end, we make more global classrooms possible with international scholarships and international virtual mobility, and we facilitate equitable and inclusive access to higher education with initiatives such as special attention to people with disabilities.

The UOC's priority is to help citizens and professionals develop critical awareness, knowledge of other realities and a sense of social responsibility, to become agents of change capable of improving their environment and people's quality of life.

To achieve this, we work with third-sector entities to offer social internships and encourage the university community to participate in various volunteering programmes.

In a similar vein, we have introduced the interdisciplinary competency of ethical and global commitment, which includes gender perspective, in our bachelor's and master's degree programmes. We also ensure equality of treatment and opportunities between women, men and those identifying as LGTBIQ+ through our Equality Unit.

In addition, we also seek to make society fairer and more sustainable by helping to tackle challenges currently faced in rural areas with the UOC Rural Network, a space for co-creation and knowledge transfer aimed at promoting rural development and territorial cohesion.

Our research addresses global challenges

At the UOC we conduct research focusing on interdisciplinary projects in three main areas: the network society, e-learning and e-health.

The Interdisciplinary R&I Hub, which is part of the UOC Campus in Barcelona's 22@ tech district, focuses its research on interactions between technology and the human and social sciences. We're committed to open knowledge, interdisciplinarity and network cooperation, and promote research on technology and the use of ICT for social transformations.

More than 50 research groups and 500 researchers work in R&I at the UOC. We have two research centres: the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3), which specializes in the internet and the effects of technology on human activities, and the eHealth Center, which focuses on research in digital health. In addition, the eLearning Innovation Center (eLinC) does research in e-learning and applies the results to the development of the UOC's own model. Research is also promoted by the Doctoral School and the research groups in the seven faculties. And, through Hubbik, a collaborative ecosystem for entrepreneurship and open innovation projects, we support the transfer of research findings.

All this reflects our belief that the knowledge generated through research should be open to everyone, as this is the only way to generate social impact and move towards sustainable development. For this reason, we promote open access publishing, FAIR data and open innovation (with participatory bachelor's and master's degree final projects), and have an open access institutional repository for research (O2). We also support projects designed to engage the general public, offering forums and building knowledge co-creation processes based on social needs, with a special emphasis on citizen science. We also have a system for the qualitative assessment of research and its social impact (DORA).

The UOC's vision of the future

The UOC's vision of the future is shaped by its ambition to transform higher education in the digital age. This is rooted in its firm belief that universities must play a more strategic role and achieve greater social impact by acting as hubs that share knowledge throughout society.

Our priority at the UOC is to meet the ever-changing needs of people, companies and institutions, promoting employability, entrepreneurship, social equality and critical thinking.