University of the Sunshine Coast is the first 'greenfield' university to be established in Australia in over 20 years. The concept of a university for the fast growing region of the Sunshine Coast was first proposed in 1973.

In February 1996, Sunshine Coast University College opened its doors to 524 students. Full university status was obtained on 1 January 1999 and University of the Sunshine Coast (USC) was granted full membership to the Australian Vice-Chancellor's Committee (AV-CC) in November 2000.

The University's three faculties of Arts and Social Sciences, Business and Science offer a broad range of undergraduate and honours degrees, and postgraduate programmes. The innovative on-line Master of Business Administration and Master of Financial Planning enable students to study from anywhere in the world.

The University's buildings have won awards for their architectural design and innovation. In 1997 the University Library won the prestigious national architecture award, the Sir Zelman Cowen Award for Best Public Building. Stage V of the University, an Information and Communications Technology Building, commenced construction in 2003, and will contain a productive ageing research centre.

Designed and developed as a vibrant modern university with dynamic new staff, USC has had a rapid period of progress since it first opened it doors, and is already overtaking or challenging some older university in a myriad of ways. The university is committed to regional issues to have international significance, strong academic courses and research initiatives reflect this local-global connection.

Students consistently praise staff for providing an outstanding level of support to them, because USC is an institution of human scale of 3,500 students from all over the world.

In Malaysia, post-graduate courses, like the MBA and the MFP (Master of Financial Planning) are offered with supervised and online support.