The University

Welcome to the University of New South Wales, one of Australia's leading research and teaching universities. At UNSW, we take pride in the broad range and high quality of our teaching programs. Our teaching gains strength and currency from our research activities and our international nature; UNSW has a strong regional and global engagement.

In developing new ideas and promoting lasting knowledge we are creating an academic environment where outstanding students and scholars from around the world can be inspired to excel in their programs of study and research. I encourage you to explore the UNSW website so you can find out more about what we do.

UNSW will commemorate 60 years of extraordinary achievement in 2009. A range of events throughout the year will pay tribute to the past and present accomplishments of staff and students. Details of these events will be posted on the UNSW Events Calendar throughout the year.

UNSW is renowned for the quality of its graduates and its commitment to new and creative approaches to education and research. Its motto – Scientia Manu et Mente ("Knowledge by Hand and Mind") – encapsulates the University's central philosophy of balancing the practical and the scholarly.

UNSW is a founding member of the prestigious Group of Eight research intensive universities in Australia and a member of the Universitas 21 international consortium.

Established in 1949, UNSW has expanded rapidly and now has close to 40,000 students, including more than 7000 international students from over 130 different countries. The University offers more than 300 undergraduate and 600 postgraduate programs, and has developed an extensive network of alumni chapters throughout Asia.

The main UNSW campus is located on a 38-hectare site at Kensington, seven kilometres from the centre of Sydney. Other campuses are the College of Fine Arts (Paddington), UNSW@ ADFA (Canberra), and sub-campuses at Randwick and Coogee, as well as research stations around NSW.

UNSW has a broad disciplinary base, with Faculties of Arts and Social Sciences; Built Environment; Engineering; Law; Medicine and Science, as well as the College of Fine Arts, UNSW@ADFA and the Australian School of Business.

UNSW is host to groundbreaking research in fields as diverse as quantum computing, molecular engineering, photovoltaics, robotics, biomedical research, financial markets and design and interactive cinema. It has strong collaborative links with industry and business, consistently performing at the top nationally in Australian Research Council Industry Linkage Grants. UNSW expertise is also regularly sought after by business and government for a wide range of consultancy and training services.

UNSW has identified environmental sustainability as one of its strategic priorities. In 2007 it established the UNSW Climate Change Research Centre – bringing together more than 60 researchers from various disciplines across the University, it will be the largest centre of its kind. The University is also walking the talk with initiatives aimed at making the UNSW campus the greenest in Australia.

UNSW has almost 100 research, teaching program and community centres. Its research centres foster multidisciplinary research and include national centres such as the National Centre in HIV Epidemiology and Research, ARC Centres of Excellence such as the Centre for Advanced Silicon Photovoltaics and Photonics, and UNSW centres such as Brain Sciences UNSW. Construction has also begun on the Lowy Centre for Cancer Research – the largest integrated cancer research institute in the Southern Hemisphere.

The University is a member of 15 Cooperative Research Centres and is affiliated with a number of prestigious medical research institutes, including the Garvan Institute of Medical Research and the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute.

UNSW consistently scores highly in a range of national and international rankings.

The University was ranked 47th in the world in the UK’s 2009 Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) World University Rankings. The annual rankings of the leading 200 universities are based on six factors: academic and employer surveys, staff-student ratios, research citations and the proportion of international staff and students.

The AGSM MBA Program was ranked as the leading full-time MBA in Australia and 32nd in the world in the Financial Times (UK) 2009 ranking of the top 100 global MBA programs.

This is the tenth consecutive year the AGSM MBA Program has ranked in the top 100 MBA programs worldwide.

UNSW's accounting research was ranked first out of 1087 institutions worldwide in the June 2007 edition of the international journal Accounting and Finance.

UNSW rated ahead of all other universities in Australia under this fund for excellence and improvement.

The Fund awards scores across four discipline groups. UNSW ranked number one for business, law and economics as well as for science, engineering, computing and architecture. UNSW also rated in the top A1 band for humanities, arts and education, and achieved an A2 ranking for health.

UNSW scored highly in the 2010 Good Universities Guide, being awarded the maximum five-star rating for seven key performance indicators: including research grants, research intensivity, student-staff ratio, staff qualifications, cultural diversity, graduate starting salary and positive graduate outcomes.

According to the Graduate Destination Survey, UNSW maintained its leading position in graduate salaries with median starting salaries of more than $50,000 across all major disciplines.