Student Guide 2025/2026
Making quality higher education accessible
At the UOC we're motivated by our mission to make quality higher education accessible and empower you to transform your life and those of the people around you. Seeking to enable societal transformations, we conduct research, promote projects with social impact, build alliances and provide support for entrepreneurship and knowledge transfer.
This commitment lies at the heart of our identity and is the starting point for everything we do.
We make higher education more accessible, inclusive and adaptable to every stage of your life.This is made possible by our fully online, innovative, flexible and rigorous educational model, designed to support and focus on you, the student.
With over 90,000 students and a community of people from more than 150 countries, we offer a wide variety of quality academic programmes, ranging from bachelor's and university master's degrees to lifelong learning programmes and microcredentials designed to meet both present and future challenges.
Based on our belief that education drives progress, the UOC is a non-profit university with a public service commitment. It operates with government-regulated fees and partially public funding. Our activities are fully accredited, and our official university degrees are valid throughout Spain and the European Higher Education Area.
In addition, students like you play an active role in our governing and representative bodies. As well as equity and transparency, this model ensures shared governance committed to serving society.
An exclusive educational model tailored to your needs
At the UOC, we understand that the way you live, work and learn as a student is unique to you. In view of this, our training supports you and adapts to your needs and circumstances, with personalized learning pathways and without compromising on academic rigour or high educational standards.
Our approach to learning, which is based on reflection, project participation, collaborative work and the application of knowledge in real situations, builds key transferable skills and increases your capacity to make a positive impact on society.
This active, hands-on UOC learning model is in constant evolution thanks to the work of the eLearning Innovation Center, our educational innovation centre.
Now, we want to go further and take the lifelong learning experience to the next level, providing comprehensive support. Insígnia is a lifelong learning model that links individuals to their portfolio and environment, empowering them to manage their personal journey and career in accordance with their interests, awareness of their competencies, the range of programmes available to them and the opportunities present in the job market and their surroundings.
AI as a key component of our educational and management model
At the UOC, we view artificial intelligence as a tool that complements the human factor, freeing you to focus on value-added tasks while enhancing your learning experience with agile, personalized and proactive support.
This is why the SofIA project goes beyond applying AI to teaching: it also improves the UOC's internal management and administrative processes within an ethical, safe and interdisciplinary framework.
Research as a strategic tool to understand the world, anticipate change and move towards a more critical, responsible and progressive society.
Digital research and innovation that is impactful and transformative
At the UOC, we conduct interdisciplinaryapplied research linked to today's major social, technological and educational challenges.
The UOC's more than 50 research groups actively contribute to the development of the transformations needed to face today's global challenges.
To do this, they focus on five missions:
- Lifelong education
- Ethical and human-centred technology
- Digital transition and sustainability
- Culture for a critical society
- Digital health and planetary well-being
In addition, Hubbik, our collaborative ecosystem for the promotion of entrepreneurship and open innovation projects within the UOC community, also provides support for the process of transferring research findings to society.
At the UOC, we're committed to open knowledge, interdisciplinarity and network cooperation, and we promote research on technology and the use of ICT for social transformation. All this reflects our belief that the knowledge generated through research should be for everyone, as this is the only way to generate social impact and move towards sustainable development.
Towards an open, digital and inclusive pan-European university
The UOC is shaping the future of European digital education as the leader of OpenEU, the first pan-European alliance of open and online universities.
Together with Europe's leading open and distance universities, we connect over 368,000 students and 24,000 professionals in the worlds of work and academia to build a flexible, inclusive and high-quality international learning space that aims to foster digital, social and ecological change.
Through our participation in the OpenEU alliance, we reaffirm our commitment to European higher education and strive to open new horizons to give you an international, inclusive and online learning experience. This includes the opportunity for future access to international mobility programmes, internships and job opportunities across Europe, as well as the chance to form part of student communities throughout the continent.
UOC students around the world
