UCC was established in 1845 as one of three Queen’s Colleges at Cork, Galway and Belfast. These new colleges were founded in the reign of Queen Victoria and named after her. Queen's College, Cork (QCC) was established to provide access to higher education in the Irish province of Munster.
UCC is one of the leading research institutions in the State and its research income is consistently one of the highest in the country. The university offers a research-led curriculum that attracts the highest calibre of students.
From 1850, QCC was part of the Queen's University of Ireland and, from the 1880s, of the Royal University of Ireland. By the beginning the twentieth century, however, it was clear that higher education in Ireland required a new arrangement to permit the next stages of development. That change came in 1908 through the National University of Ireland (NUI), of which the former QCC, now University College Cork (UCC) is a founding member.
The landscaped gardens and surrounds of UCC are known as ‘the quad’ and superstition holds that students crossing the quad before graduation risk bad luck and failure in exams.
The University has four colleges - Arts, Celtic Studies and Social Sciences: Business and Law; Science, Engineering and Food Science; and Medicine and Health. There are over 17,000 students pursuing undergraduate and postgraduate studies.
University College Cork is Ireland's premier research university attracting the highest peer-reviewed research income per head nationally and is home to a number of major national research institutes and centers that have been established over the past few years.