The University of Jaén (UJA) is a medium-sized public university in Spain which was established in 1993. Although the university has three campuses (in the cities of Jaén, Linares and Úbeda), the main one can be found in the city of Jaén where most of its faculties and colleges are located as well. With wheel chair accessible buildings the university welcomes not only Spanish but international students as well. This is part of a conscious effort to increase the university´s international profile that is of utmost importance in pursuit of widening its knowledge base and its horizons.  UJA has signed a set of agreements and actively collaborates with institutions from all around the world with a significant emphasizes on European universities due to the high number of possibilities arising from the framework of the Erasmus+ program. However, students from all around the World are welcomed on all degree courses. In addition to this, UJA publishes calls for grant on a regular basis which includes many different scientific areas, such as the university´s Sport Grant for Outstanding Sportsman/Sportswomen. Latter can help attract non-European citizens as well. Thanks to an exceptional graduate and postgraduate international incoming and outgoing student population, UJA is becoming one of the leading exchange universities in Southern Spain.

In relation to the above, it is also of crucial importance to describe the university using numbers. As mentioned before, the university has 3 campuses, 5 faculties, and 2 engineering schools. The university hosts some 17,000 students, from which almost 2.5% are international students. The majority of the students, some 14,000 students (81%) are enrolled in one of our gradual program, while the university has more than 1,500 students enrolled in one of the postgraduate program, 580 of which are engaged in a Ph.D. degree program.

In light of the above numbers, it is not surprising that the university has 37 Bachelor´s, 44 Master´s, 9 international double degree and 19 Ph.D. programs. Academic courses in the framework of these programs are instructed by 895 lecturers, 82% of them being in possession of a Ph.D. degree. Students are encouraged to participate in the research conducted by the professors of the university. Thus, a number of books accounting for almost 800,000 are at our students’ disposal, including more than 43,000 periodicals and 150 data bases.

Bachelor’s degree programs include basically all scientific areas, with an emphasis on the scientific field of Engineering. Academic degree programs related to Engineering account for a total number of 14 programs, while the university offers 3 programs related to Experimental Sciences, 2 programs in case of Health Sciences, 9 programs in the field of Humanities and Education, 8 programs related to Social and Legal Sciences and one Social Work program. In case of the Master´s degree programs, students can elect from a wide variety of programs. The number of programs related to the following scientific fields include: 11 to Engineering, 5 to Experimental Sciences, 8 to Health Sciences, 8 to Humanities, Education and Arts and 11 to Social and Legal Sciences. In accordance with the universities approach to become more and more international, UJA has 9 international double degree programs in cooperation with Italian, French, German and British universities. Our 19 Ph.D. programs help students engage into the research activity with many international publications as an outcome.

The University of Jaén has a firm commitment in the development of research in different fields and its transfer to society. Around a hundred research groups work at the moment in all areas of scientific knowledge with more than 675 PhD. active, in collaboration with other national and international leaders in their field, and with the industry. It has more than 2000 publications in prestigious scientific journals, 31.1% of them developing in collaboration with institutions of other countries. Over 45% of these publications are in the highest quartile (Q1) in the Journal Citation Report index and 12.2% of them are in the 10% of publications more cited in the world.