FNB Maties

The origin of the university can be traced back to the Stellenbosch Gymnasium, which was founded in 1864 and opened on 1 March 1866. The first five students matriculated in 1870, but capacity did not initially exist for any tertiary education. However, in the 1870s, the Cape Colony's first locally elected government took office and prioritised education. In 1873, four of the five 1870 matriculates became the institution's first graduates by attaining the "Second Class Certificate" through distance learning, and the gymnasium's student numbers rose to over a hundred.

In 1874, a series of government acts provided for colleges and universities, with generous subsidies and staff. A personal intervention by the Prime Minister in the same year ensured that Stellenbosch qualified, after initially being allocated to be purely a secondary school. Later in 1874, the institution acquired its first professor and, in the following few years, its capacity and staff grew rapidly. Its first academic senate was constituted at the beginning of 1876, when several new premises were also acquired. The first MA degree (in Stellenbosch and in South Africa) was completed in 1878. That same year, the Gymnasium's first four female students were enrolled.

The institution became the Stellenbosch College in 1881 and was located at the current Arts Department. In 1887, this college was renamed Victoria College; when it acquired university status on 2 April 1918 it was renamed once again, becoming Stellenbosch University. Initially, only one university was planned for the Cape, but after the government was visited by a delegation from the Victoria College, it was decided to allow the college to be a university if it could raise £100,000. Jannie Marais, a wealthy Stellenbosch farmer, bequeathed the money required before his death in 1915. There were certain conditions to his gift, including that Dutch/Afrikaans have equal status to English and that the lecturers teach at least half their lectures in Dutch/Afrikaans. By 1930, very little, if any, instruction was delivered in English.

In December 2014, specialists at the university performed the first successful penis transplantation on a 21-year-old man.

Stellenbosch University was the first African university to sign the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities.

Although the university was originally named the University of Stellenbosch (Afrikaans: Universiteit van Stellenbosch), it nowadays uses two forms: the English version Stellenbosch University (abbreviated SU) and the Afrikaans version Universiteit Stellenbosch (abbreviated US).