Explore the best universities in Cyprus based on data collected
Cyprus has a reputation for good public education and it is in the top three countries in Europe in terms of the amount of GDP it spends on education.
Low tuition fees and the great location mean that Cyprus is popular with foreign students and roughly 10,000 of them come every year. The lingering British influence means that many courses are taught in English.
The island has a rich past with preserved tombs, ancient mosaics and a whole town designated as a Unesco World Heritage Site. Modern Cyprus is equally fascinating; the former British colony sits at the crossroads of east and west (the capital Nicosia is closer to Beirut than Athens) and although the island has had its share of strife, today the combination of Coptic Christian, Islamic, ancient Greek pagan and British colonial influences come together to create a unique culture.
If you want to study for a degree in Cyprus, take a look at the following information to help you choose the institution that is right for you.
University of Cyprus
The University of Cyprus is a public institution founded in the island’s capital Nicosia in 1989. The university admitted its first class of 486 students in 1992. Since that time the student body has grown and the university has expanded its curriculum.
The university has 21 departments split between eight faculties: Faculty of Humanities, Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences, Faculty of Social Sciences and Education, Faculty of Economics and Management, Faculty of Engineering, Faculty of Letters, The Medicine School and the Faculty of Graduate Studies.
As well as teaching, many faculties house research institutes undertaking postgraduate-level research in a range of fields, from oceanography to gender studies to nanotechnology. The university is gaining a reputation for quality research in some fields and Christopher Pissarides, a professor at the university, was awarded the Nobel Prize for economics in 2010.
The main campus is located in the capital, giving students all the advantages of life in a busy modern city while still being close to rugged mountains and beautiful beaches. The main campus houses the university library, which holds 620,000 books.
Cyprus University of Technology
The Cyprus University of Technology is a public university in Limassol, the island’s second city, which is on the south coast. A new university, CUT was only established in 2004 and its first students began classes in the 2007-08 academic year.
The university is research-focused and was established in an attempt to offer subjects that were not being covered at Cyprus’ other large, public university, the University of Cyprus. The university is currently undergoing a period of growth and expansion.
The main schools of the university are in the old city centre in renovated government buildings. There are plans to expand the university to a purpose-built 50,000 square-metre campus near the city centre by 2020. The university plans to have about 7,000 students by this time, with between five and seven faculties and 20 to 30 academic departments.
Forging links with foreign universities is a key focus at CUT and one of its stated aims is “the development of international cooperation with academic and scientific institutions”. The university is part of the European Erasmus scheme as well as several international partnerships with leading universities.
