Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia

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National University for Distance Education
Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia

Established:	1972
Type:	Public
Rector:	Juan Gimeno Ullastre
Staff:	9,630
Students:	180,000 [1]
Location:	Various cities, Spain
Website:	http://www.uned.es/

The Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED), is the public Spanish Open University. It was founded in 1972 following the idea of the UK's Open University to provide quality higher and continuing education opportunities to all through the distance education system. It awards the same qualifications as other Spanish universities. However, some special features of UNED make it different from most other Spanish universities; it is nationwide in scope, uses different methodology, and has a wide social influence with radio and TV programming.

UNED’s mission is to be present as a centre of excellence throughout the world. UNED currently has 60 study centres in Spain and 20 abroad thanks to the cooperation of local institutions. These centres provide face-to-face sessions with professors once a week. The international centres can be found in Bata, Berlin, Bern, Brussels, Buenos Aires, Caracas, Lima, London, Malabo, México D.F., Paris and São Paulo.

UNED is the second largest university in Europe^{[citation needed]} with more than 150,000 students and since 1997 it has held the UNESCO chair in Distance Education which promotes research, development and documentation in the field of distance education. The University maintains an excellent standard of higher education: In the last 30 years it has awarded less than 2,000 PhD degrees.