The roots of the University of Wolverhampton lie in the nineteenth-century growth of Mechanics Institutes. The Free Library (1870) developed technical, scientific, commercial and general classes, while a School of Art (1851) had been developed into the Municipal School of Art in new buildings by 1885. Engineering and science laboratories were opened in 1926 and the foundation stone of the major new buildings in Wulfruna Street was laid in 1931. The 1950s and 1960s saw extensions for the Wolverhampton and Staffordshire College of Technology.

In 1969, the College of Technology and the College of Art were amalgamated to form one of the first of the new polytechnics. Mergers with teacher training colleges in Wolverhampton and Dudley in the 1970s and Walsall in 1989 played a part in the institution's expansion, and in 1992, with a new campus in Telford under construction, it was granted university status.