Mission

As university of the nation, the National University supports equal access opportunity to the Colombian educational system. It provides the largest offer of academic programs in the country, and forms competent and socially responsible professionals. It contributes to the making and redefinition of the nation’s project. It studies and enriches the cultural, natural and environmental patrimony of the country. It acts as a consultant to scientific, technological, cultural and artistic aspects of such project, with academic and research autonomy. 

Vision 2017 

The National University of Colombia - according to its mission, which is defined in Extraordinary Decree 1210 of 1993 - must strengthen its national character by means of the coordination between national and regional projects, which promote the advance in the social, scientific, technological, artistic and philosophical fields of the country. Thus, the University, as a higher and public education entity, must allow all admitted Colombian students to study undergraduate and graduate programs of the highest quality under equitable criteria, recognizing diverse academic and ideological orientations, and based on the University Welfare System, which crosses the mission axes of teaching, research and extension programs.
It will be the best university of the country, and will become the top Colombian university, globally recognized and one of the most important of Latin America and the Caribbean. It will have high quality undergraduate and graduate programs, equipped with modern and flexible infrastructure and didactic techniques that facilitate a fast response from the academic community to the changes and new challenges of its environment and insertion in the global world. The National University will also impact on the development of the primary, secondary and technological high quality education. It will lead the Public Higher Education System of the country by means of its teaching and research practice.
The University will offer graduate programs based on the generation of knowledge and its use for the solution of fundamental problems of the Colombian society. It will also carry out important and international research and extension programs, with close communication between the productive, social and governmental sectors of the country and the university.
There will be a special emphasis on research development from many organizational forms (groups, disciplinary and thematic centers, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary institutes) coordinated in a system with clearly defined goals, with promotion policies and effective communication tools, as well as programs integrated to groups and networks at the national and international sphere. Most of its research projects will be common to undergraduate and graduate programs, which will have direct and fast communication among them. The undergraduate and graduate programs will be connected and must interact with the research and extension programs through the research professors, the participation in the research hotbeds and groups, and the carrying out of permanent seminars of socialization and social validation of research and extension results, among others, disseminating such results in national and international text books and journals, and also through mass media.
The University will also strengthen the programs of extension and integration with the society and its institutions, which will respond to the fundamental social necessities through projects, originated at the university and which will be strongly related to teaching and research. The University will use the generated knowledge to bring equitable economic and social growth and development through its alumni and its research and welfare extension impact.
Thus, the University will have an active institutional life, based on a University Welfare System that strives for a healthful university, with a communication model and a management structure that allow effective decision making, with actual participation of the university community[ 1]. The university will constantly question itself and reflect on the structural problems of the country. This will allow it to be a reference institution of conservation and change by efficiently using the extraordinary diversity of the systematic knowledge it houses. Such diversity is expressed in the number of its disciplines as well as the variety of its approaches and philosophical and ideological stances. By following this path, the university can effectively become a leader of Colombian thinking, intellectuality and artistic creation. It will form science and technology leaders needed by the country to make its progress sustainable. It will provide all the necessary conditions for the comprehensive and intellectual development of all the people passing through it, which is their right as human beings and citizens of this country, allowing them to project themselves to the globalized world. In brief, the university will be an academy that takes part in an active, critical and constructive way in the reflection on the national development and identity. It will promote the communication means to get in contact with all the members of the society.

In Colombia, the idea of public and state university began to take shape shortly after the Independence of our country. Under Santander's administration, from the Vice-presidency of the Gran Colombia, the Central University of the Republic (with seats in Bogota, Caracas and Quito) was established as the first legal-institutional expression of the public university in Colombia. Around 1830, the university began to operate with professors and students who kept the experience of the Botanical Expedition alive.

Later on, the federalist and radical governments, arguing that the universities were teaching and work monopolies that threatened individual freedom, closed down the Central University until 1864, when José María Samper, long-time radical, presented a bill before the Congress about what he called National University of the United States of Colombia. On September 22, 1867, it was officially founded by means of Law 66 issued by the Congress.

At that time, the University consisted of six faculties: Law, Medicine, Natural Sciences, Engineering, Arts and Crafts, Literature and Philosophy. The Astronomical Observatory, the National Museum, the National Chemical Laboratory, the National Library, the Charity Hospital and the Military Hospital were also appended.

Between 1903 and 1940 more than 20 degrees were created in the University, among which are: Architecture, Nursing, Pharmacy, Chemical Engineering, Veterinary Medicine, Dentistry, and Chemistry. At the end of the 1960s, master's degrees were boosted both in the National University and in the country. The first master's degree programs were created between 1967 and 1973. The first doctoral programs in the country were started in 1986 in the fields of mathematics and physics.

The National University of Colombia, with more than 145 years of existence, has promoted equal access opportunity to the Colombian educational system and has formed socially responsible and competent professionals.
The University offers 94 undergraduate programs, 86 graduate certificate programs, 38 certificates in the healthcare field, 133 master's programs, and 51 doctoral programs.

Medellín Campus

In 1936, by means of Agreement 131 of the Superior Council, The National School of Mines (founded in 1886) was attached to the National University of Colombia.  Two years later, the School of Tropical Agriculture of Medellín was also attached to the National University; that school is today's Faculty of Agricultural Sciences. Between 1954 and 1975, the Faculties of Architecture, Sciences and Human Sciences were created, which established a new academic structure for the campus.