Universidad ORT Uruguay
Universidad ORT Uruguay is Uruguay's largest private university. It has more than 13,000 students, distributed among five faculties and institutes. History. ORT Uruguay was established in 1942 and is a member of the international World ORT educational network founded in 1880 by the Jewish community of St. Petersburg and with a presence in more than 60 countries. In 1995, the Uruguayan government enacted decree 308/95 of 11 August establishing the country's first legal framework for the operation of private universities. In February 1996, ORT Uruguay was the first institution to apply for authorisation to operate  as a private university, granted in September of the same year. In July 2012, the Institute of Education of Universidad ORT Uruguay launched Uruguay's first Doctorate in Education. This advanced postgraduate course, recognised by the Uruguayan Ministry of Education and Culture in 2014, encompasses an international network of researchers who focus their academic efforts on issues of relevance to national educators. ORT awards 75 professional qualifications at postgraduate, undergraduate and technical diploma levels in Architecture, Engineering, Biotechnology, Management, Economics, International Relations, Design, Animation, Communication and Education. It has established academic cooperation agreements with more than 200 international universities and  institutions worldwide to facilitate student exchanges and collaborative research and teaching projects. It is also a member of several international academic associations, including the International Association of Universities (IAU) and the Union of Latin American Universities (UDUAL). The academic staff is made up of more than 1,500 lecturers and researchers, of whom more than a third are tenured at the university, allowing them to carry out research and work closely with their students. The university runs a scholarship programme benefitting more than 1,000 new scholarship holders per year. The scholarships are aimed at new students whose income or family income  prevents them from funding their studies in full, and at high-achieving school leavers. The university's Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE), which was created in 2009, is aimed at fostering innovation and entrepreneurship, promoting opportunities and strengthening ties between business leaders and the academic and socio-productive sectors. The Centre for Innovation also has a laboratory where all the university's areas of knowledge and development converge. The university is also represented by several sports teams: basketball, five-a-side football, handball, hockey and volleyball, all competing in Uruguay's university sports leagues. In 2005, the degrees in  Electronic Engineering and Telecommunications Engineering were certified at Mercosur level through the Experimental Mechanism for the Accreditation of Degrees (MEXA), for the maximum six-year period. This accreditation was renewed in 2011, through the ARCU-SUR system that replaced MEXA. The Architecture programme was also recognised by the ARCU-SUR system in 2009 for the maximum term, having renewed its certification in 2016. In 2019 ORT was admitted to the United Nations Academic Impact (UNAI) network, a cluster of institutions promoting the UN's academic activities. For its part, the Master's in Business Administration (MBA) was accredited by the  Association of MBAs (AMBA) and is the only Uruguayan MBA to be included in the published in June 2020. The network, with 1,300 members in 135 countries, advocates for the protection of human rights, access to education, sustainability and conflict resolution. Since July 2020, the university has been listed in the Times Higher Education Latin America University Rankings. In September 2021, a study carried out by the world leader organisation in higher education analysis services QS Quacquarelli Symonds, placed Universidad ORT Uruguay among the 550 universities with the best employment rate for their graduates globally.