In the location's words:

The Berlin University of the Arts is one of the world's leading university-based artistic educational institutions. It sees itself as an institution of the 21st century, aware of its tradition and history, which goes back to the 17th century.

The university focuses on outstanding artistic and creative teaching, research and further education in over 70 courses of study in the four faculties of Fine Arts, Design, Music and Performing Arts as well as the Central Institute for Further Education/Berlin Career College, the Inter-University Center for Dance (in cooperation with the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts) and the Jazz Institute Berlin (in cooperation with the Hanns Eisler Academy of Music Berlin). The UdK Berlin is one of the few art colleges in Germany to have university status with the right to award doctorates and habilitations. It also trains teachers in the subjects of art, music and theater/performing arts.

The understanding of art taught at the UdK Berlin is shaped by its excellent teaching staff. It draws on a wide-ranging professional perspective of practice and theory formation, from which new artistic questions arise. Current art practice develops its own areas of knowledge and approaches to the world and reflects on these critically. The field between the arts and sciences is a reflexive space from which epistemologically and methodologically new things are drawn and the familiar is questioned.