Universitat Pompeu Fabra

OPompeu Fabra University was founded in 1990 by the Autonomous Government of Catalonia. Its headquarters are in Barcelona, the capital of Catalonia, and the UPF is a committed and responsible university that sets its sights on consolidating the values of a high-quality public institution open to the world. The essential aims of this institution are based on training good professionals and contributing to conducting research.

Since its foundation, the University has consolidated its teaching and research project and has achieved a high return from resources society has placed at its disposal. On-going educational and technological innovation and improvement, high academic performance of its students, a high level of employability of its graduates and a high rate of internationalisation and good positioning of the University within the scope of research are only some of the aspects that have contributed to the high prestige the institution has managed to achieve. Therefore, its activity indicators are at present a benchmark for the Catalan university system.

The UPF offers all-round training by applying a strict teaching model of high-quality and excellence. The UPF teaching work is focussed on the fields of social sciences and humanities, health and life sciences and communication and information technology. This became a reality in the 2008-2009 academic year with an offer of 20 graduate degrees, 24 official master degrees, 9 doctorate programs and 379 further education programs.

The UPF university community consist of 1.129 teachers and researchers, 635 administration and services personnel, 10.294 graduate and post-graduate students and 9.925 further education students.

The planned horizon for its future growth is to consolidate the university’s fields of knowledge by means of offering a graduate course in medicine, which will mean the existing studies in human biology can be completed. The greatest expansion of the UPF will take place in the field of official post-graduate courses, which in the medium term is hoped to include 30% of all the students, a large number of which will be foreigners. Therefore, the offer for third cycle studies and post-graduate programs will be renewed and constantly adapted to the needs of the professional and productive sectors. By implementing the new teaching model in order to have adopted the European Higher Education Area model (EHEA) by 2010, the UPF intends to offer complete, exclusive and highly competitive post-graduate training on an international level; therefore students can specialize after their general education obtained from the new graduate courses. The 2008-2009 course UPF started six new degrees fully adapted to EHEA.

The research work conducted at the university is of a high level and is competitive from an international standpoint in the following fields: social sciences; health and life sciences; information and communication technologies and humanities. The UPF provides companies and institutions with a multidisciplinary team composed of almost eight hundred highly qualified researchers whose normal work involves efficient and innovative solutions offered to the production and service fields and the authorities. This close cooperation with companies and institutions is achieved by performing various types of work: basic research and development projects, conducting technical studies, technology transfer through using patents and know-how, consulting services and technical assistance, exchange of researchers and information on the available aid to finance the university-company partnership, etc. In addition, the UPF promotes interactive business/university collaboration ("càtedres" in Catalan) being set up and other stable partnership structures (for example, observatories) to determine working lines for research, development and innovation depending on the priorities and needs of both the company and the university.

Within the scope of important scientific infrastructures, the UPF is a leader in three important projects: The Biomedical Research Area in Barcelona, opened in 2006, where more than one thousand scientists from all over the world are working, and the Barcelona Media Area, a large training, research and production infrastructure in the fields of communication and technology, currently in the construction stage. There is also a plan in process at the moment for a UPF Research-Social Sciences and Humanities Area.

Improvement in quality through new technologies is one of the main goals of the University. The UPF is currently one of the leading universities in Spain for development and application of new information and communication technologies in education and research. In this respect, the solid position held by the UPF stands out as far as external studies are concerned, e.g. a study at the University of Oviedo and another for the AUNA Foundation, for which the UPF holds, jointly with the UPC, the first place in university ranking for the quality and offer of internet resources: on-line information, virtual management options, virtual classroom and campus development, etc. In addition, according to the Atlas Digital de la España Universitaria-2007 (The Spanish Digital University Atlas), published by the Cantabria University, the UPF library holds first place in the rankings for Spanish university libraries.

With deep identification with the Catalan culture and its territory, the UPF can also be defined by its international aims. The generalised mobility of students to universities around the world, promoting enrolment of foreign students, recruitment of top level foreign lecturers and researchers and its active participation in international projects, networks and associations have made UPF an innovative university according to its internationalisation indicators and profound commitment to an open world. A clear example of this aim towards internationalisation is that the UPF is currently the leading university in Spain for student mobility.

The UPF campus is urban and strategically located in the centre of the city of Barcelona, in an area that starts in the lower part of the Rambla as far as the new innovation area of Barcelona, the 22@ district. Since the time of its foundation the UPF has always contributed to urban planning, architectural refurbishment and reactivation of certain districts in the city of Barcelona. The five buildings currently used for the University –Rambla, Ciutadella, França, Mar and Ca l’Aranyó– are perfectly communicated with each other by the city’s public transport system.

The building called Pompeu Fabra University, in honour of the person that structured modern Catalan grammar, was created with the intention of becoming a benchmark for its excellence, quality and strictness in its operations. However, it was also formed as a framework with the aim of contributing to the prestige of the Catalan public university system and promoting its regeneration and modernization. Since it was founded, the UPF has aimed at two goals when designing its new teaching project, practically two demands: to provide high quality teaching and achieve high academic performance as evidence of efficient and effective use of the public funds society makes available to it.

From the perspective obtained over the years, it has been shown that these initial goals have been fully achieved. Therefore, the UPF model is efficient and effective and has a direct and beneficial impact on society. The institutional indicators have proven this: both for academic performance, degrees obtained within the stipulated time or one additional year and student mobility rates are the highest of all the Catalan public universities.
- Academic performance: Students obtained 83% of their enrolled credits (2007-2008 academic year), compared with 71% in all the universities in the Catalan public system. 86.1% of the graduates find a job within a year after obtaining their degree.
- The graduation rate within the time set or in one additional year for the 4-year degrees was 56%, whereas this figure was 29% for all the universities in the Catalan public system (2005-2006 academic year).
- Mobility rate: 31.9% of the graduates in the 2007-2008 academic year spent a gap year abroad.

The fact that the UPF is located right in the centre of the city of Barcelona was also one of the essential factors taken into account when determining the university model to be designed and the progressive territorial implementation of the university has helped to reactivate the historic districts of the city that were at such time in a serious state of decline, such as Ciutat Vella, and promote the newly created central areas, such as the Olympic Village or the 22@ district.