The Ortega y Gasset Research University Institute is a center of graduate degree training and research in Social Sciences and Humanities, essentially equivalent to the graduate schools of the American universities. Created in 1986 in the Fundación José Ortega y Gasset, it was the first Spanish university institute promoted and managed by a private institution, affiliated to a public university. At the present time its board of trustees is formed by institutional representatives of the Fundación, the Autonomous Region of Madrid, the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport and the Complutense University of Madrid, to which a select group of academics elected by consensus is added.

The Institute has an extraordinary international vocation. Only 53 percent of the students is Spanish, while the rest is divided among 33 nationalities. Near 30 of the very outstanding academic and research centers where professors come from is foreign, such as Oxford, California, London, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Hamburgo and São Paulo.

The Institute aims to provide a maximum quality training, supported by an exceptional faculty, a reduced number of students in classrooms and a very demanding work load and rhythm. Faculty is constituted by full professors of around 60 universities and research centers; approximately half of them is Spanish and the rest is divided into equal parts among Europe, United States and Latin America. Together with these academics a group of prestigious professionals, including managers, high public officials and lawyers, teach in the Institute.

Facilities:

The Ortega y Gasset University Institute have their headquarters in an old manor with a garden located in the center of Madrid, between Miguel Ángel and General Martínez Campos streets, and it is very well communicated by subway, bus and suburban train. The Institute precinct has a second building, paradigmatic work of the rationalistic architecture of the thirties, which houses the main part of the classrooms and a computer room. Students have also a common room located in the garden.

Students have at their disposal a library incorporated to the network of the High Council of Scientific Research (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, CSIC), and that houses 50.000 volumes related to the research areas and around 300 scientific magazines.