Cardiff University is a public research university in Cardiff, Wales. Founded in 1883 as the University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire, it became a founding college of the University of Wales in 1893, and in 1997 received its own degree-awarding powers, although it held them in abeyance. It merged with the University of Wales Institute of Science and Technology (UWIST) in 1988. The college adopted the public name of Cardiff University in 1999; in 2005 this became its legal name, as an independent university awarding its own degrees. The third oldest university institution in Wales, it contains three colleges: Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences; Biomedical and Life Sciences; and Physical Sciences and Engineering.

Cardiff is the only Welsh member of the Russell Group of research-intensive British universities. It is recognised as providing high-quality, research-based university education, and placed between 100th and 200th in the world by the four major international rankings, and in the top 40 in all three UK achievement tables. It ranked 5th in the UK among multi-faculty institutions for the quality (GPA) of its research and 17th for its Research Power in the 2014 Research Excellence Framework. For 2018–2019, Cardiff had a turnover of £537.1 million, including £116.0 million in research grants and contracts.

The university has an undergraduate enrolment of 23,960 and a total enrolment of 33,190 (according to HESA data for 2018/19)^[5] making it one of the ten largest universities in the UK. The Cardiff University Students’ Union works to promote the interests of the student body within the University and further afield. The university’s sports teams compete in the British Universities and Colleges Sport (BUCS) leagues.

Region	Central Europe
Country	United Kingdom
Established	1883
Status	Public
Students	26900
European University Rankings	91
Central European University Rankings	77
National University Rankings	23
Official Website	https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/