A leading specialist university
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- Published date 01 June 2023
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UAL is internationally regarded as the UK’s pre-eminent provider of undergraduate art and design education. Read a summary of our TEF Year Two provider submission and learn why we are a world-class University.
UAL consists of 6 renowned art and design colleges offering 100 undergraduate courses across our Colleges:
- 79% of our 14,000 undergraduate students study art and design
- 10% creative media subjects; 8% fashion business
- and 3% related subjects.
This makes us a specialist university, the first of our kind to be established in the UK with title awarded in 2004, and the largest in the world. UAL's success comes from:
- a foundation in immersive, enquiry led education
- specialist teaching staff
- ongoing investment in technical workshops
- a symbiotic relationship with the creative economy
UAL's success is founded on an immersive, enquiry-led creative education. Specialist teaching staff support student learning in importantly different ways, with groups of staff – academics, technicians, librarians and student support experts – providing inputs and creative voices to each student’s original project.
We make an ongoing investment in technical workshops in which the most sophisticated objects can be produced, supported by our technicians who hold a high level of subject and technical expertise.
Our symbiotic relationship with the creative economy is facilitated by an unusually high percentage of staff who are simultaneously professional practitioners and work within UAL.
Our portfolio, the development and delivery of our courses, and the learning experience of our students are constantly informed by professional experience. As a result, each of our courses has a distinctive engagement with industry, ensuring students can enter the creative economy upon graduation. Our outcome metrics demonstrate this with 95.7% of our graduates in employment or further study from our 14/15 cohort. UAL is the largest single provider of creative graduate skills in the country.
Read the UAL TEF Year Two provider submission (PDF 299KB).
Learn about our teaching quality and how our distinctive teaching approach helps students become successful artists, designers and professionals.