The University of Granada (UGR) is a public university situated in the historical city of Granada, which lies just 35 km from the spectacular Sierra Nevada mountain range and 65 km from the tropical Mediterranean coast. The University was officially founded by the Emperor Charles V in the year 1531, and built on a centuries-old teaching tradition dating back to the madrasahs of the Nasrid dynasty of Granada. Accordingly, it is one of the most significant universities in Europe in terms of its historical importance.
Since its founding, the UGR has expanded on a par with the city, with its faculties and schools distributed throughout the metropolitan area. Five of the UGR’s seven campuses are spread out across the city of Granada, giving it an unmistakable university atmosphere. Meanwhile, the University’s campuses in the North African cities of Ceuta and Melilla make it one of the few genuinely intercontinental universities in the world. It also maintains strong historical ties with institutions and universities in Latin American, leaving it perfectly placed to fulfil the role of a bridge between Europe and Latin America on the one hand, and between Europe and North Africa on the other.
As well as working constantly to enrich the city culturally, the UGR is fully committed to its policy of recovering, restoring and conserving buildings of historical worth in Granada. “La Madraza” (1349), the “Hospital Real” (the seat of the Rectorate of the UGR) and the Faculties of Law, Translation and Interpreting, and Communication and Documentation are all housed in spectacular buildings of considerable historical significance. Indeed, given its increasingly influential role in the life of Granada over the past 500 years, the University has come to define the city architecturally, culturally and economically.
Approximately 70,000 individuals – students, researchers, lecturers, and administrative and support staff – are directly linked to the UGR, making it the 4th largest university in Spain. This university community has turned Granada, with its 240,000 inhabitants, into a vibrant and cosmopolitan city.
Every year, an additional 8,000 students enrol on complementary courses, language courses, and continuous learning and summer courses, alongside approximately 60,000 students who complete online courses with our University, reflecting the vast scope of the UGR’s influence in the higher education sector.
A high-ranking university
The UGR is recognised internationally for its quality in higher education, teaching, research and outreach. National and international rankings reflect the UGR’s position among the top universities in Spain and among the best in the world.
In 2019, the University of Granada has further consolidated this dominant position – taking 4th place in Spain and featuring among the global top 300 universities in the world in the recently published Shanghai Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU 2019). The UGR is only surpassed by the University of Barcelona, Complutense University of Madrid and Autonomous University of Barcelona in the 2019 ARWU, outperforming other important Spanish institutions such as Pompeu Fabra University, the Autonomous University of Madrid and the University of Valencia.
Viewed from the perspective of its performance in specific academic subjects, the UGR has also set a new record, with 3 UGR subjects featuring among the global top 50 and a staggering 35 subjects featuring in the 2019 ARWU. In total, five UGR subjects feature among the world top 100, marking another significant milestone. Particularly noteworthy are the University’s achievements in the subjects of Library & Information Sciences (36th worldwide); Food Science & Technology (37th worldwide); Mining and Mineral Engineering (47th worldwide), Computer Science & Engineering (global top 76-100); and Mathematics (global top 76-100). Given this exceptional performance, the academic year 2019-2020 promises to be another momentous era for our institution.
The state-of-the-art Health Sciences Technology Park (PTS) University Campus, which houses the Faculty of Health Sciences and the Faculty of Medicine, offers a cutting-edge combination of teaching, research, healthcare and knowledge transfer, and is a significant example of the University’s commitment to innovation, as well as to promoting local and global partnerships with the public and the private sectors.
This year also saw the founding of six new University spin-offs; bringing the total number to 65. These spin-offs are pivotal in guaranteeing effective knowledge transfer processes from our University, ensuring that research findings are successfully exploited and turned into innovative new services and products.
An extensive range of programmes
This year, over 47,000 undergraduate students will be enrolled on our 89 bachelor’s degrees at the UGR, with a further 5000+ students set to enrol on our master’s degrees. The UGR has also increased the scope of its postgraduate offerings for the academic year 2020-2021, which now include over 100 master’s degrees and 28 doctoral programmes. As a result, we currently offer one of the most extensive and diverse ranges of higher education programmes in Spain.
An international and multicultural university
For over a decade, our university has consistently received more incoming international students than any other European institution. We also continue to send more students abroad on Erasmus+ exchange programmes than any other European university. During the course of the current academic year, more than 2,600 new exchange students from over 70 countries will complete studies at the UGR, thanks to the diverse range of mobility programmes on offer at our institution. Collectively, the UGR participates in more than 800+ international bilateral and multilateral exchange agreements with institutions around the world.
Furthermore, approximately 10% of those enrolled on our undergraduate programmes, 20% of our master’s students, and 30% of our doctoral candidates are international students. They also have the opportunity to learn Spanish and other languages alongside the 10,000 local and international students who enrol each year on courses offered by the UGR’s Modern Languages Centre (CLM), Confucius Institute (Chinese), and “Russkiy Mir” Russian Centre.
We are a founding member of the international Coimbra Group, an association of European universities at the forefront of higher education. We are also a member of a vast array of other prestigious international networks, such as the European University Association (EUA), the Iberoamerican University Association for Postgraduate Studies (AUIP), the International Association of Universities (IAU), the European Association for International Education (EAIA), and the Association of International Education Administrators (AIEA).
