The UOC

To become consolidated as one of the leading universities for quality online education with a global reach and endowed with an optimal structure for giving the best possible service to students, periodically assessing and publishing their level of satisfaction. The UOC's methodology seeks to make the learning processes as easy as possible, constantly innovating for further improvement.

The Fundació per a la Universitat Oberta de Catalunya was created on 6 October 1994 as an initiative of the Government of Catalonia to provide lifelong learning through the use of information technologies and a personalized educational model.

The UOC is a university that renders a public service but is organized in accordance with private management principles. The UOC is part of the university system of Catalan and the Spanish  university system. The qualifications it offers are official and are endorsed by the Catalan University Quality Assurance Agency (AQU Catalunya) and the National Agency for Quality Assessment and Accreditation of Spain (ANECA), which assure rigour and compliance with the standards demanded by the European university system.

The UOC's programmes and courses have been accredited by national (AQU, AQU-AUDIT, Spanish Universities Council) and international (UNWTO, TedQual and Euro-Inf) quality seals. The UK's Times Higher Education journal ranks the UOC among the world's leading 800 universities, and the only online university from Spain.
 
We are the first Catalan university to have all our official programmes accredited
AQU Catalunya (Catalan University Quality Assurance Agency) has certified the implementation of the UOC's internal quality assurance system (IQAS). The University has a single IQAS for the entire institution, covering all the official bachelor's and master's degree programmes it teaches. Certification of the IQAS ensures that the system is implemented and deployed at the centre – in this case, throughout the University – and that it is fit for the purpose of assuring the quality of the programmes taught at the UOC. Certification of the IQAS has led to institutional accreditation during the academic year 2021/2022, which makes it possible to accredit all the University's official bachelor's and master's degree programmes for a period of six years, which can be extended for equal periods upon submission to an external assessment process.
 

 

Considering all the programmes, there are 90,400 students.

The following numbers of people work at the UOC:*

  • 615 faculty and research staff
  • 6,556 teaching support staff (course and adjunct instructors) and tutors
  • 886 staff members

*Figures for teaching and research staff, full-time research staff and administrative staff who were active as of 31 December 2023. Figures for teaching support staff and tutors for the 2023/2024 academic year.

Yes. The UOC's graduate community, Alumni, was created in 2008. UOC Alumni seeks to provide an interface between graduates and university, with the goal of becoming an effective platform to enable former students to contact other people they studied with, professional colleagues, teachers and faculties. Furthermore, the UOC's graduate community facilitates access to lifelong learning and professional upgrades.

The UOC is an independent institution. However, we are involved in many cooperation projects around the world with other institutions, universities, companies, international organizations and intergovernmental agencies, such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), UNESCO, the UNDP, the UNWTO, WHO and the United Nations.