United World Colleges (or UWC) is an educational organisation with which schools, shorter educational programmes, national committees in more than 150 countries are affiliated. UWC schools, colleges and national committees offer scholarship and bursary schemes as well as accepting a number of fee-paying students that varies by college.
Based in the United Kingdom, the UWC organisation has 17 schools and colleges in Canada, India, Italy, Norway, Singapore, Swaziland, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Armenia, Costa Rica, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Thailand, China (mainland and Hong Kong), the Netherlands and Japan; national committees in more than 150 countries; a portfolio of short programmes running in numerous countries; a network of nearly 60,000 alumni from more than 181 countries; and an international office in London.
Most UWC colleges offer the International Baccalaureate exclusively, and as such only offer two-year programmes. Four schools in Thailand, Singapore, the Netherlands and Swaziland also teach a pre-16 syllabus to younger students. The now-closed UWC vocational college in Venezuela accepted students at tertiary level and taught a Higher Diploma in Farm Administration. Each UWC typically comprises between 200 and 300 students from about 85 countries.
The first UWC college, the United World College of the Atlantic, located in a 12th-century castle set on 90 hectares of grounds in the Vale of Glamorgan in Wales, United Kingdom, was founded in 1962 by Kurt Hahn, a German educationalist who had previously founded Schule Schloss Salem in Germany, Gordonstoun in Scotland, and the Outward Bound movement.