The University of Louisville (UofL) is a public research university in Louisville, Kentucky, United States. It is part of the Kentucky state university system. Chartered in 1798 as the Jefferson Seminary, it became in the 19th century one of the first city-funded public colleges in the United States. The university is mandated by the Kentucky General Assembly to be a "Preeminent Metropolitan Research University".
Louisville is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity". The University of Louisville School of Medicine is touted for the first fully self-contained artificial heart transplant surgery, as well as the first successful hand transplantation in the United States. The University Hospital is also credited with the first civilian ambulance, the nation's first accident services, now known as an emergency department (ED), and one of the first blood banks in the US.
University of Louisville is known for its Cardinals athletics programs. Since 2005, the Cardinals have made appearances in the NCAA Division I men's basketball Final Four in 2005, 2012, and 2013 (vacated); football Bowl Championship Series Orange Bowl in 2007 and Sugar Bowl in 2013; the College Baseball World Series 2007, 2013, 2014, 2017, 2019, and 2025; the women's basketball Final Four in 2009 (runner-up), 2013 (runner-up), 2018 (national semi-final), and 2022 (national semi-final); and the men's soccer national championship game in 2010. The Louisville Cardinals Women's Volleyball program has three-peated as champions of the Big East Tournament (2008, 2009, 2010), were Atlantic Coast Conference Champions in 2015, 2017, 2020, 2021, and 2022, and made appearances in the NCAA Division I women's volleyball Final Four in 2021 and the national championship in 2022 and 2024. Women's track and field program has won Outdoor Big East titles in 2008, 2009 and 2010 and an Indoor Big East title in 2011.
History
Founding and early years: 1798–1845
The University of Louisville traces its roots to a charter granted in 1798 by the Kentucky General Assembly to establish a school of higher learning in the newly founded town of Louisville. It ordered the sale of 6,000 acres (24 km2) of South Central Kentucky land to underwrite construction, joined on April 3, 1798, by eight community leaders who began local fundraising for what was then known as the Jefferson Seminary. It opened 15 years later and offered college and high school level courses in a variety of subjects. It was headed by Edward Mann Butler from 1813 to 1816, who later ran the first public school in Kentucky in 1829 and is considered Kentucky's first historian.
Despite the Jefferson Seminary's early success, pressure from newly established public schools and media critiques of it as "elitist" would force its closure in 1829.
Eight years later, in 1837, the Louisville city council established the Louisville Medical Institute at the urging of renowned physician and medical author Charles Caldwell. As he had earlier at Lexington's Transylvania University, Caldwell rapidly led LMI into becoming one of the leading medical schools in what was then considered the western US. In 1840, Louisville College, a sibling municipal liberal arts school chartered a few years earlier as the Louisville Collegiate Institute, was established. As LMI fared better financially than the college, political efforts ensued to either have LMI pool their resources with the college or have the college take administrative control of LMI, with no success. In 1844 the college inherited land from Jefferson Seminary intended for higher education use, but this did not enhance its financial position.
As a public municipal university: 1846–1969 In 1846, the Kentucky legislature combined the Louisville Medical Institute, Louisville College, and a newly created law school into the University of Louisville, on a campus just west of Downtown Louisville. As they still maintained separate finances, Louisville College folded soon afterwards. The university experienced rapid growth in the first half of the 20th century, adding new schools in the liberal arts (1907), graduate studies (1915), dentistry (1918), engineering (1925), music (1932), and social work (1936).
In 1923, the school purchased what is today the Belknap Campus, where it moved its liberal arts programs and law school, with the medical school remaining downtown. The school had attempted to purchase a campus donated by the Belknap family in the Highlands area in 1917 (where Bellarmine University is currently located), but a citywide tax increase to pay for it was voted down. The Belknap Campus was named after the family for their efforts. In 1926, the building that would later be dedicated as Grawemeyer Hall was built.
In 1931, the university established the Louisville Municipal College for Negroes on the former campus of Simmons University (now Simmons College of Kentucky), as a compromise plan to desegregation. As a part of the university, the school had an equal standing with the school's other colleges. It was dissolved in 1951 when the university desegregated.
During World War II, Louisville was one of 131 colleges and universities nationally that took part in the V-12 Navy College Training Program which offered students a path to a Navy commission.
In the 1950s and 1960s, the university's remaining years independent of the state system, schools were opened for business (1953), education (1968), and justice administration (1969).
As a public state university: 1970–present Talk of Louisville joining the public university system of Kentucky began in the 1960s. As a city-funded school, the movement of people to the suburbs of Louisville created budget shortfalls for the school and forced tuition prices to levels unaffordable for most students. At the same time, the school's well-established medicine and law schools were seen as potential assets for the state system. Still, there was opposition to the university becoming a state institution, both from faculty and alumni who feared losing the small, close-knit feel of the campus, and from universities already in the state system who feared funding cuts that would be necessitated to accommodate UofL. After several years of heated debate, the university joined the state system in 1970, a move largely orchestrated by then Kentucky governor and UofL alumnus Louie Nunn.
The first years in the state system were difficult, as enrollment skyrocketed while funding was often insufficient. Several programs were threatened with losing accreditation due to a lack of funding, although schools of nursing (1979) and urban and public affairs (1983) were added.
John W. Shumaker was named the university's president in 1995. Shumaker was a very successful fundraiser, and quickly increased the school's endowment from $183 to $550 million. He developed the REACH program to encourage retention. In 1997, he hired athletics director Tom Jurich, who restored the athletics program and raised over $100 million to raze abandoned factories and old parking lots next to campus and replace them with on-campus athletic facilities, which vastly improved the aesthetics of the Belknap Campus. Academically, Louisville moved closer to parity with the state's flagship University of Kentucky as retention rates and research funding increased, and average GPAs and ACT scores were much higher for incoming freshmen.
James R. Ramsey, the university's 17th president, continued the endowment and fundraising growth started by Shumaker. However, Ramsey added more emphasis on improving the physical aspects of the Belknap Campus. To this end, he started a million-dollar "campus beautification project" which painted six overpasses on the Belknap Campus with a University of Louisville theme and planted over 500 trees along campus streets, and doubled the number of on-campus housing units. The university's federal research funding doubled under Ramsey, and three buildings were built for nanotechnology and medical research. The university's graduation rate increased from 30 percent in 1999 to 52 percent in 2012.
On June 17, 2016, Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin announced that the entire board of trustees of the university would be immediately disbanded and replaced, and that Ramsey would be stepping down. This was confirmed in a statement issued by Ramsey on the same day. Ramsey offered his resignation at a board of trustees meeting on July 27, 2016, which was accepted by the board. In December 2016, the university was placed on academic probation by its accrediting agency, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, over concerns that Governor Bevin's actions had "violated rules that require that universities be independent". The probation was lifted a year later. The governor's actions were initially blocked by a judge but supported by new legislation passed by the Kentucky legislature in early 2017. In a lawsuit, the university sought $80 million in damages from president Ramsey, but settled only for $800,000 in 2021.
From 1895 to 2016, the university's Belknap Campus featured a Confederate monument, built before the campus grew to surround the land on which it stood. Commemorating the sacrifices of Confederate veterans who died in the American Civil War, it was erected by the Muldoon Monument Company in 1895 with funds raised by the Kentucky Woman's Confederate Monument Association. Due to controversy in 2016, the statue was moved from its original location to Brandenburg, Kentucky. Relocation started in November and was completed in mid-December.
In the summer of 2017, the university again came into the national spotlight as a series of scandals became public. The university's foundation, the organization that manages its endowment and investments, reported "millions of dollars in unbudgeted spending, unapproved activities and endowment losses" in an audit. The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) suspended the head coach of the men's basketball team, Rick Pitino, for five games after an investigation revealed that a university employee paid escorts to strip and have sex with players and recruits. Shortly after the NCAA announced its findings and penalties, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the office of the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York announced the arrest of 10 individuals connected with a "pay for play" scheme connected to sportswear manufacturer Adidas and many institutions, including Louisville. Pitino was subsequently fired.
Following Neeli Bendapudi's resignation, provost Lori Stewart Gonzalez served as interim president from January 2022 to January 2023. Kim Schatzel became the University of Louisville's 19th president on February 1, 2023. On March 26, 2025, Schatzel resigned as president and Gerry Bradley was appointed the university's 20th president.
Campuses
The university has three campuses in the Louisville area, the Belknap, the Health Science, and the Shelby. It also has an International Campus in Panama City, Panama, as well as various satellite facilities in the state of Kentucky and abroad:
Belknap Campus
Acquired in 1923, the Belknap Campus is the school's main campus. It is located three miles (5 km) south of downtown Louisville in the Old Louisville neighborhood. It houses seven of the 12 academic colleges and features one of the casts of Auguste Rodin's The Thinker in front of the main administrative building, Grawemeyer Hall. The grounds of the campus were originally used as an orphanage, with several of the original buildings used.