University of the Andes (Colombia)

The University of the Andes (Spanish: Universidad de los Andes), also commonly self-styled as Uniandes, is a private research university located in the city centre of Bogotá, Colombia. Founded in 1948 by a group of Colombian intellectuals led by Mario Laserna Pinzón, it was the first Colombian university established as nonsectarian (independent from any political party or religious institution).

The university is academically composed of nine schools, three special academic entities—the Alberto Lleras Camargo School of Government, the Center for Research and Training in Education (Spanish: Centro de Investigación y Formación en Educación, CIFE), and the Interdisciplinary Center for Development Studies (Spanish: Centro Interdisciplinario de Estudios sobre Desarrollo, CIDER)—and a joint academic venture with the medical institution Santa Fe de Bogotá Foundation, offering 31 undergraduate, 18 doctoral, and 38 graduate degree-granting programs in areas of human knowledge such as medicine, engineering, science, law and others.

It has 731 full-time professors, 73% of whom hold a doctoral degree. It is composed of 12 academic units divided into 10 faculties, the Alberto Lleras Camargo School of Government, and the Interdisciplinary Center for Development Studies. It offers 44 undergraduate programs, 87 master's programs, 17 doctoral programs, and 7,066 continuing-education courses. It has more than 143 accredited research groups and a library system with a collection of 681,717 volumes dating from the Middle Ages to the present.

On January 26, 2015, the National Ministry of Education granted it the Institutional Accreditation of High Quality for 10 years. Rankings such as the Quacquarelli Symonds World University Ranking place it among the top 220 universities in the world, among the top 5 in Latin America, and the best in Colombia.