The United Arab Emirates University was founded in 1976 on the instructions of Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, and is the oldest national university in the country. Its main campus is in Al Ain, in the emirate of Abu Dhabi, and it has additional faculties and centres in that city.
Academic structure
The university is organised into colleges covering the sciences, engineering, medicine and health sciences, humanities and social sciences, law, business and economics, education, agriculture and food, and information technology. It offers undergraduate and postgraduate programmes and has grown a research programme in areas including water and arid-land agriculture, renewable energy, materials, public health and heritage.
Role in the federation
The university was established only five years after the federation, as part of the founding generation's programme of building national institutions. It was for decades the principal route for Emirati students into higher education, and its graduates have staffed the federal administration, the schools, the health service and the growing private sector. Its position has been complemented since the 1990s by other national and international institutions, including Khalifa University, Zayed University and the Higher Colleges of Technology, and by branch campuses of foreign universities in the free zones.
Research and facilities
The university operates research centres and a science and innovation park, and maintains laboratories and field stations for environmental, agricultural and engineering research. Its library system and its national role in archiving Emirati heritage material give it a function beyond teaching.
Relationship with Al Ain
The campus is a defining institution of Al Ain and part of the city's character as an administrative, educational and cultural centre rather than an industrial or trading one. Its presence is closely associated with the deliberate development of the city as a garden city in the 1970s.