The University of North Carolina Asheville offers a singular experience for original minds.

We’re the original and only liberal arts campus in the University of North Carolina system. We break down conventions, overcome obstacles, expand horizons. We dare to connect curiosity and critical thinking, courage and challenge, imagination and impact, opportunity and responsibility. When the world looks down, we look up.

We’re a public resource that draws on a deep history to make a profound impact—on our students and on the world. We founded the National Conference on Undergraduate Research. Our STEAM Studio helped to produce the largest public art installation ever shown in Times Square. We offer majors and concentrations that re-tool the liberal arts and sciences for new challenges and new opportunities. We live in one of America’s great small cities, a mountain town with wit and grit, with an artist’s eye and an explorer’s heart.

We are the originals. We’re rooted in the Land of the Sky, at the intersection of what’s known and what’s possible. This is an education that’s affordable, adaptive, and endlessly relevant. This is an experience where every path leads to a new vista, where there’s room for every voice, and where the future is a frontier—vast and bright and close enough to touch.

UNC Asheville’s national reputation for empowering human potential is rooted in its unique student-centric public liberal arts and sciences mission. UNC Asheville thrives on close-knit connections among students and their faculty and staff mentors. The University’s 3,300 students are innovative, ethical, creative and resilient leaders who seek to understand complex global challenges and find creative, sustainable solutions that benefit our communities and the world. More than 65 percent of UNC Asheville students conduct applied research alongside faculty experts. UNC Asheville consistently ranks as a national top 10 Public Liberal Arts and Sciences University by U.S. News & World Report, and on its list of Most Innovative Schools. UNC Asheville regularly earns several national top 20 rankings in The Princeton Review’s “The Best 386 Colleges,” including Best Quality of Life, Town-Gown Relations, and UNC Asheville has ranked in the top two nationally for the “Best Schools for Making an Impact,” in The Princeton Review’s “Colleges that Pay You Back.”