Established in 1930, the university is one of South Africa's largest, offering around 1 800 academic programmes in English and Afrikaans. It has the highest research output in South Africa, a position it has held proudly since 1997.

The university has nine faculties spread over seven campuses – economic and business sciences; education; engineering; built environment and information technology; health sciences; humanities; law; natural and agricultural sciences; theology; and a faculty of veterinary science at Onderstepoort, which is the only one of its kind in South Africa.

Its business school, the Gordon Institute of Business Science, was established in Johannesburg in 2000. GIBS was ranked as the top MBA in Africa by the Financial Times in 2011.

Teaching and learning at the University of Pretoria are regarded as core to the academic enterprise. This is stated in the previous and new strategic plans, but is also reflected in the manner in which the Executive portfolios are structured, the range of faculties at the University, the strategic planning practices, and the range of services supporting academic staff and students.

The following underpins teaching and learning:

• The education principles;
• The governance of teaching and learning;
• Programme design and curriculum development (discussed in the section of the portfolio on Programme development, management and review);
• Student support that ranges from lecturing guidelines, study guides, mentoring of students, and services provided by the Office of the Dean of Students (discussed in the section of the portfolio on Student assessment and student success);
• The languages of tuition;
• Assessment policy and practices (discussed in the section of the portfolio on Student assessment and student success);
• Continuous monitoring of study success and associated interventions;
• Quality of and support for teaching staff ;
• A range of quality assurance mechanisms for teaching and learning;
• The student-lecturer ratio;
• Physical facilities.